Connecting to my WPA enabled wireless router

I just swapped routers for my home network from a d-link to one of the wireless linksys routers. It's one where you hold down a button on the outside and it sets up the wireless stuff for you with security stuff :P. Anyways, I did that and it setup WPA and has the key on the site. We have 4 wireless laptops that need to connect to this router. 3 of the 4 connected with no problem. The 4th I've been messing with for a while now.

First I couldn't find any option for WPA, and I noticed the windows update icon in the tray on the taskbar. So I figured WPA may be one of the many updates missing on this computer. Well, we got SP2 and then some installed and still no connection. Then I installed some package that had something to do with WPA, and I thought it was going to solve it, and it seems to be close. Now there is a drop down menu when I go into properties on the network that lets me select between open, wpa and wpa-something. I choose wpa, put in the key, and when I try to connect, it won't connect. I also tried connecting without putting my key in there thinking it would ask me for a key, but it never did. One thing I noticed is that on my laptop if I go into properties on my wireless network connection it has WPA Security Protocol listed in the protols. The machine that won't work doesn't have this, and I thought one of the updates would install it which they didn't. So now I'm lost. What do I need to do to get this machine to have a connection through the new router with WPA?

Try choosing 'WPA-PSK' when you're going to connect, and put the password in below that. If it still doesn't connect, try downloading this patch, and make sure your computer is fully updated as well. Update your wireless NIC's driver as well if you can.

That should solve the problem. :)

Cheers,

-jk

yeah, that wpa-psk is the wpa-something I was talking about :P. I tried that to no avail. That link looks promising. Too bad I'm at work now. When I get home in a few hours I'll try and install that, and if that doesn't work I'll check for driver updates on the card. Thanks for the link.

WPA can be squirrely IME...

If the card drivers and the router don't match exactly there seems to be no end of trouble with it... You'll get no end of errors like "The WAP only accepts a128 bit key" or 64 bit and all sorts of other funny stuff yet your login doesn't allow you to put in the required amount of characters. If you enable PSK, (Pre-Shared Key), then some implementations will allow you to just put the password in and it works... Others require that you put in the hash of the password that the router provides you after the password is entered....

...and this is where the problem lies... There are so many combinations... that implementing it can be very difficult to acheive It can be demoralizing and in the end you say WTF and just go with WEP... because it works quickly and easily.... which is wrong....

Well, there may be a firmware (BIOS) update or a vendor driver update. Check with the laptop vendor or the vendor for the built-in wireless card for updated wireless drivers for use with newer WPA routers. If your router is set to use WPA2 (AES) and your laptop doesn't have the updated hardware stuff, you'll have problems.

You didn't mention the laptop brand, so I'm just guessing. This also depends on how old the system is and if the built-in wireless card supports the firmware updates.

It's actually a desktop with a d-link dwl-520+ card in it. I tried the link J_K9 gave and it said I already had a newer version or something of whatever that was. I'm about to go check out the d-link site to look for driver updates. I'm looking at 3 options I think:

1. I get it to work, perhaps with new drivers or some other way, and all is good.

2. What I have right now. I put the old router back up not really acting like a router. I disabled dhcp and am not using the internet port. I just have one ethernet cable connecting it to the network, and then the PC with the problem connects to it and gets internet access. That's how I've been doing windows update and stuff.

3. I buy or make a fairly long cable to go to my brother's room where this PC is. This is the main reason he has wireless, he's kind of isolated and requires a long cable or wifi to have internet access. That's why I hacked together putting up the old router again for him to access the internet.

He's fine with how it is with the old router up just for him, but I think it's sort of a bad solution. If we can't get it to work with the new router, I think the best option will be to just make a long cable (about 50 feet or so, which isn't too bad).

The other 3 that work are my toshiba laptop with builtin wifi on XP home. My dad's dell laptop with builtin wifi on XP pro, and my brother's powerbook with OSX. He's on XP pro if I didn't mention that, but it was upgraded from either ME or 98. He wanted to do the upgrade cause he had so much stuff on there. I thought it was a bad idea and was in favor of a clean install. Oh well. I'll keep on trying, but hardwired isn't looking so bad at this point.

Thanks for the help.

edit
Hmm, this doesn't look good:
http://support.dlink.com/faq/view.asp?prod_id=1401

Unless the DWL-520 (Rev E) counts as the DWL-520+ I think I might be out of luck.

Probably not, h3r3tic. The way things have been going, it doesn't take long for a wireless adapter to become excess baggage. I had two really cool APs and 24 wireless adapters that are taking up space in a box back at the former position. None could be updated or anything, so ...

Anyway, just on the odd chance, check the BIOS firmware for your desktop, as well. Sometimes you find that support for some functions are added to later BIOS revs (happens with Dell's a lot).