Can't PING Wireless LINKSYS Router

[jayro]

Gotta LINKSYS 4 Port 802.11b wireless router. This came with a wireless PC card for the laptop in the household. This laptop is a TOSHIBA Satelite A10 system purchased about a year back. The other system is a COMPAQ Desktop PC. Both run WIN XP Home.

Well, setup router and connected to desktop system with an ethernet cable. Configured router manually to connect with PPPoE to DSL ISP account. All went fine. Router connected, PC accessing internet and web sites perfectly.

Installed software for wireless PC card to laptop. On restart, NEW HARDWARE WIZARD detected new PC card. Installed drivers for new PC card and everything looked fine.

Accessed the LAC Icon for the Wireless LAN connectoid in NETWORK CONNECTIONS. We could see the default LINKSYS wireless network in the properies for this icon. Connected to the wireless network. Pulling a LAN IP Address from the router (192.168.201.1 or something similar). Signal strength for the wireless connection was excellent. Opened IE to finish up and got PAGE CANNOT BE DISPLAYED. Did some kitchen table troubleshooting including PINGing the router from COMMAND PROMPT in XP and coulnd't find anything that seemed out-of-sorts. PING STATISTICS though showed all requests timed out and 100% packet loss. Well, if in doubt.....UNINSTALL. We did and started over. Same result. A little more troubleshooting. No change. At this point we called LINKSYS tech support.

After pretty much repeating all that we had already tried, including another uninstall reinstall for the PC card, I inadvertently mention that along with the new LINKSY Wireless Ethernet Adapter under Network Adapters in the Device Manager, there was a new category not there, in DEVICE MANGER, before. Namely PCMCIA Card Bus Controller with 2 entries for identical items from TEXAS INSTRUMENTS. At this poing the LINKSYS tech support rep said this was incompatible with 802.11b technology and we must use 802.11g system for LINKSYS router and wireless PC Card.

Well, that was the end of the LINKSYS call. Just for curiousity sake we connected the Laptop to the LINKSYS router with an ethernet cable, the same as the PC system was. Still got PAGE CANNOT BE DISPLAYED, even though the PC was on a website at that exact moment. Well, now I tried bypassing the router altogether and connected the laptop to ISP on standalone setup using PPPoE connectoid from NETWORK CONNECTIONS. Opened IE and there was a web page.

Is this 802.11b imcompatibility explanation so much cow-flop? I don't get it as a legitimate explanation. Just don't make sense, to me anyways.

Can anyone add to this issue and identify anything that may correct this problem. Otherwise, it's off to the 'puter store to swap this router and PC card for 802.11g technology to see if that will solve issue at hand.

Thanks in advance for your input.

jayro

[Spider]

When your on the wireless and there are no splats in Device Manager then the
wireless card is fine and compatible. Double check in DM to see the driver
states "This device is working properly".

If your Toshiba is showing up in the Clients Table in the router's interface then
the connection and compatibility is also fine.

From there it's something on the Toshiba that is preventing the Web access.
Have you tried adding the router as a Gateway (router's IP) in the Toshiba's
TCP/IP Gateway(tab)?

What does ipconfig (I'm assuming this is Windows XP) show on the laptop?
ipconfig /all
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

All firmware updates installed on the router?

[Jett]

ok....i ran ipconfig /flushdns, release and renew. Re-established the wireless network connection from LAPTOP to router but still no route. I set the tcp/ip properties to use a specified IP address of 192.168.1.1 as well as the DNS server to the same.

I am still unable to load a web page in IE.

Any more suggestions?

tia,

jayro

don't mind the avatar for JETT....that's me too, à la my son....LOL

[Spider]

I set the tcp/ip properties to use a specified IP address of 192.168.1.1
You won't have any success doing that, 192.168.1.1 is the router itself. Your in a sense
telling the laptop it's a Linksys wireless router and the laptop says "What the...?"

Don't assign IP addresses in TCP/IP on the computers
select Obtain an IP address automatically on the computers
The only thing you want to input into TCP/IP is on the Gateway(tab)
where it says New gateway: type in 192.168.1.1 (the router is the gateway)
then click the Add(button)

There is an interface to control the router. You open an IE, type in the Address slot
http://192.168.1.1
there is a section called Status and you can use buttons to Release and
Renew the router itself from the ISP connection.

If you make too many changes in the router's config you can press the reset hole in
the front of the router and get the defaults back. I suggest you get a password on the
router interface right away and whatever you do do not forget that password.

Also there are probably updates for the router at Linksys's site. I suggest you get
over there and get any firmware or driver updates.

[jayro]

Hey Spider.....

Thanks.....kept pluggin' away here....and found the problem. All that was causing this no route, PAGE CANNOT BE DISPLAYED problem was Sygate Personal Firewall not "playing nice" with the router firewall. Disabling SPF and voilà!!! We have web pages. WooHoo!!!!

Now to figure out how to configure SPF to work with the router firewall and that should fix that.

thanks for your input SPIDER, always appreciated.

ciao

jayro