Laptop won't connect to router.

Schwiiing

Our old Eircom Motorola router got fried in a lightning strike on Tuesday.We had a newer Zyxel Eircom router in a press and plugged that in.

My 2 yr old Acer connects perfect but my mothers ~8 yr old Toshiba can only connect to the router wirelessly but not the internet but will connect to the internet via a CAT5 cable direct to the router. Any help as to how to connect it wirelessly?

red sean

The old laptop is probably using XP. The new router probably using WPA2 security and XP can't handle it.
I'm no computer expert, but I've had this problem before. Downgraded the security on the router and the laptop connected wirelessly. Replaced the laptop since and changed back to WPA2 from WEP.

FJFreelance

red sean wrote: »

The old laptop is probably using XP. The new router probably using WPA2 security and XP can't handle it.
I'm no computer expert, but I've had this problem before. Downgraded the security on the router and the laptop connected wirelessly. Replaced the laptop since and changed back to WPA2 from WEP.

Correct, might be better to try WPA-PSK it should work with XP as WEP is totally unsecure. But if WPA-PSK doesnt work then revert to WEP as a last resort.

Irish Steve

red sean wrote: »

The old laptop is probably using XP. The new router probably using WPA2 security and XP can't handle it.
I'm no computer expert, but I've had this problem before. Downgraded the security on the router and the laptop connected wirelessly. Replaced the laptop since and changed back to WPA2 from WEP.

Sorry, that's NOT correct, XP will work with WPA2, I've a number of machines here and 2 routers, including a very recent TP link gigabyte unit, and they're all running WPA2 with no problems.

You may need to delete the old network connection information, and then search for the network again in order to refresh the information about the new router. WPA2-PSK is working fine here, on XP Home, XP Pro, Win 8.1 Pro, Win 7 and Android

FJFreelance

Irish Steve wrote: »

Sorry, that's NOT correct, XP will work with WPA2, I've a number of machines here and 2 routers, including a very recent TP link gigabyte unit, and they're all running WPA2 with no problems.

You may need to delete the old network connection information, and then search for the network again in order to refresh the information about the new router. WPA2-PSK is working fine here, on XP Home, XP Pro, Win 8.1 Pro, Win 7 and Android

Yes but your xp machines are probably up to date and have network interface cards that support WPA2. There are some out cards that do not support it and or need drivers or the patch for xp in networks cards that do support it.

Irish Steve

FJFreelance wrote: »

Yes but your xp machines are probably up to date and have network interface cards that support WPA2. There are some out cards that do not support it and or need drivers or the patch for xp in networks cards that do support it.

the software side is fully patched, but the hardware in some cases is pretty ancient, and had not been updated in a long time, simply because there was no finance to make hardware changes.

The Laptop is an old Acer, with built in network card, that has to be at least 6 years old. but it works fine with WPA2.

I would be much more suspicious of a corrupt USB or serial port stack that's blocking network access, I've lost track of the number of machines that I've had to delete everything to do with either USB or serial in order to get networking to respond and work, and even then, it's not a guaranteed fix to get them working again. That's not just a case of uninstalling the hardware, it's often a case of doing some pretty dramatic butchery to the registry as well in order to clean out the corrupted hardware information, but that's not something to do lightly, there are significant risks in carving out big chunks of the hardware information, but there are times when there's little other alternative.



If the XP machine is not up to date software wise, then that should be the first objectiive, whatever about still using XP if it's as up to date as it can be, using XP with patches missing is inviting aggravation.