Wireless Networking Puzzle
I wonder if anyone has a suggestion that might shed some light on a very frustrating problem I encountered yesterday?
I was restoring a previous image of Windows onto a PC and was asked by the owner of a laptop that connects wirelessly to this LAN to take a look at his settings, as his laptop "couldn't get the internet" after he restored it back to factory settings. This is a laptop which came with windows pre installed and he just has recovery discs.
I connected my own laptop to this network, which is an NTL cable connection and a Linksys WRT54GS Wireless-G Broadband Router with SpeedBooster. While my laptop connected to the wireless network with a strong, "excellent" signal, I couldn't get it to open any web pages. This was the problem with the laptop I'd been asked to take a look at too. Opening a web browser just got "page cannot be displayed".
It was handing out an IP address of 169.154.xxx.xxx, ie the computer tried but was unable to get an IP address dynamically. I had a go manually assigning an IP address, but essentially I had no internet connection - something wasn't routing properly.
I tried rebooting the router, unfortunately I didn't have time to reset it back to factory defaults as I was in Belfast for the day and had a plane to catch home. This network has functioned properly for over a year, so I haven't a clue what can have gone wrong now. The laptop which regularly connects, while an excellent spec in its day (and still more powerful than mine) doesn't have a network port that allows WPA to be set as it's quite old. So I set up WEP as better than nothing, along with MAC filtering and obviously changed the network name and router password etc.
However, I don't think the problem is anything to do with this. Both laptops connected, and connected well - it was just impossible to get the internet. Any suggestions would be welcome. My next move has been to ask the laptop owner to try connecting to someone else's internet, then the router will have to be reset. I'm not at all confident of the router's owners being able to do this without problems and would appreciate any other suggestions.
When I connected my laptop via ethernet cable, the internet was fine. So was the desktop PC which solely connects via ethernet cable, which makes it even more peculiar.