First of all, are you connecting to your own wireless network or to a network you are meant to have access?

Second, if the network is protected by encryption, have you entered the encryption or network key when configuring your connection profile?

what is the ip address, and are you given a default gateway & dns address?

you can find this out at least two ways;

1 click on the conneciton icon in the systray (little computer) and select the support tab, where you should find your ip...

2 click on start, click on run, type these three letters CMD, click on enter. In the dos box, type ipconfig.

the reason i asked what the ip address was, is because in many many instances if the router does not send the pc an address soon enough, the request times out and the pc assigns itself an intRAnet address, beginning something like 6...., while the router is looking for a 192.168.... for intERnet connectivity.

Thanks for the quick responses!!

Esquire: Yes, it is a network to which i am meant to have access and the network is not protected. I used to connect to the same network for almost a year using the same settings. Atleast until a few days ago.

Sail2awe: Yes, the machine picks up an IP successfully and is assigned a gateway.

Anyhow, on reading further down the same forum, it appears that many people have issues with the same wireless card (Intel PRO/wireless 2200BG). One of the proposed solutions was to disable the firewall setup by any third party antivirus software. Well, i have Norton antivirus on my computer and i disabled the firewall. And now i can access the internet!!! But, this connection is intermittent. I can browse for a while after which i start to get the annoying "Page cannot be displayed" message. The connection gets restored automatically in a little while. i.e. until it dies again.

This problem also seems to be common.

Thanks again for the quick responses esquire and sail2awe.

I am having the same problem, is there a way to adjust the time out so that the laptop has time to obtain a valid IP? 

no way to adjust the time out that i am aware of, however, windows does provide an excellent little work around;


open up the control panel
click on 'network connections',
right click on the wireless connectoid,
select 'properties'
click on tcp/ip to highlight it
click on 'properties'

in this window, you want to change these default values to force it to obtain a valid ip, which you must assign to it here.

there are few concerns, one is any conflict with other pc ip's on the same lan, you don't want duplicates, the other is that this ip must fall within the ip address range being authorized by the router - so it may be necessary to go into the router to find out what range it assigns by default.

Generally, I have found that one of these two, are usually valid:


192.168.1.100 - 103
or
192.168.1.47

change the ticker from 'obtain an ip address automaticaly', to 'use the following ip address'.

then enter a valid ip address in the first box.
left click in the 'subnet mask' and it will add the rest for you.
in the 'default gateway' add the following ip:
192.168.1.1.
change the ticker to 'use the following dns server address'.
and enter the following ip address:
192.168.1.1.

You do not have to enter the second one (and it won't let you duplicate it anyway).

next, click on the advanced tab, and then on the 'wins' tab.

you want to unbind netbios from the tcp/ip stack here, by changing the 'netbios' setting to 'disable netbios over tcp/ip.

and you're done, ok out to the control panel, and it should be as good as old.

Message Edited by sail2awe on 03-19-2006 10:46 AM

Message Edited by sail2awe on 03-19-2006 10:52 AM

Okay, thanks, I will try that.  The only thing is that the address 198.168.1.1 is my router IP.  This is the one I want to enter into the gateway and DNS fields?  Also, you are saying as long as I have different IP addresses on every machine, I should be okay?

 

yes, 192.168.1.1 is your routers address, otherwise known as your gateway, and who you want to connect to. On the other side of this is another address, to which your gateway connects, so the gateway (router) has really, two dns's to administer, the trouble comes in when the responce from the computer comes before the defalt gateways additional inquiries, for which the above work-around is provided for in the windows OS itself. to see the process in action, a tool such as ethereal may be employeed

If you like, one may also type in to their dos box, 'ipconfig', and use the default gateway assigned by their isp, but it is the same gateway irrigardless.

any ip duplicates will be given an err popup window indicating said err.

Message Edited by sail2awe on 03-19-2006 11:01 PM

Message Edited by sail2awe on 03-19-2006 11:04 PM

Okay, great!  I will try it out.