Can't connect to wifi at home

Seth Brundle

This is wrecking my head.
I picked up a laptop (dell D600 IIRC (its upstairs and I'm feeling lazy!)) for my wife and it has an in-built wifi card & runs on XP.
At home it sees the wifi networks within range (including neighbours) but cannot connect to them. It seems to connect and then immediately disconnect.

I brought it over to a mates house and it connected to his wifi signal without any problems (no other signals in the vicinity).

I replaced the wifi router at home yet the issue still exists.
I have changed channel a few times and still no joy.

It also makes no difference if encryption is turned off.

The router at home is connected to an NTL cable modem and the laptop is fine if plugged directly into that.

Incidentally, my own laptop works fine with the home network.
Any ideas?

dark_prince

Probably a silly question, but did you restrict your router to specific attached devices at any time - I know I had this problem before and couldn't realise why it wouldn't connect to a new laptop. Other than that have been through the same pain recently!

Seth Brundle

No - there isn't anything like that. Honestly, everything is pretty much standard.

Lazarus2.0

I can understand why that is wrecking your head !

My first thought was firewall settings as you've ruled out router settings by replacing that . I cant see that a firewall will block a connection to 2 of your routers and allow a connection to another one . Being able to connect both wirelessly and wired rules out protocol settings (NetBIOS , TCP/IP, etc ) . The only thing I can think of is interference though I note you have tried different channels . It's a hell of a stretch but maybe something within the laptop is causing slight interference which combined with a neighbouring signal on the same frequency is enough to bork the connection to your router . I'd run through all the channels just to rule that out . I assume you have tried connecting from different rooms .

Fuzzy Clam

What make of router is it? A few things you can check. In device manager,check what mode the card is in the Dell. Usually B,G or N. Then check what mode the router is in. There may be an option to change it. Use mixed mode if in doubt.
Then set the router to issue ip addresses by DHCP and in the laptop tcp/ip set to obtain ip address and DNS server automaticly.
When you open the wireless connection status tab, check whether its obtained a ip address.
One other thing, do you use a 2.4 gHz video sender? These can compleatly destroy wifi.

Seth Brundle

Thanks
I'll check the router make later but its broadcasting on G and IIRC the Dell is on mixed mode (again, I'll double check later).
The router is broadcasting by DHCP Client and the Dell is on auto IP/DNS.
We don't have (not sure of the neighbours) a video sender. If it did damage the signal, surely that would affect my connection?

Seth Brundle

Well, given that everything seemed to be fine with the inbuilt wifi card, I picked up a Belkin (sssh) USB adaptor and it works fine - go figure!

MunsterCycling

What is the version of the wifi chipset on the laptop (assuming its an Intel chipset), should find that in device manager.

MC

Seth Brundle

Dell Truemobile 1150 Series Mini PCI card on a Texas Instruments PCI 1410 Cardbus Controller.
Driver version: 7.86.15.638