leowomn,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.

Is the router connected to the internet box?  Is your wireless card turned on? Some have switches on the side of the laptop to turn on the wireless. If you have this make sure that it is turned on.

Yes and Yes.  I was finally able to give it an IP address manually, but it goes in and out.  Just ran card utility again and now it says "connection status: Authenticating".  Also noticed that the details for the home network says "Encryption disabled"   Does that mean anything?

I have another laptop that has experienced no problems and this one was working fine Friday night.  My grandson turned off the power cord to the modem, router, and my PC saturday morning and when my daughter got on her laptop----No connecting at all.  Was still linked to home network , but no internet.

Have run every test avaiable on laptop and everything there is working fine. Have tried every suggestion I could find with no luck.

Oh, it is a Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN mini-card and OS on all 3 is WIN XP.  PC is connected to modem and both laptops run off router.  No changes were made to laptop before shut down Friday night.