WRT54 and Belkin wireless NIC help

qBot

Hi,

I recently purchased both a WRT54G and a Belkin Wireless NIC card. Both are wireless G and don't support the pre-n variations that are about. So i tried connecting the two up last night but no luck. I haven't touch wireless before so i'm a bit of a noob but i have a bit of experience with networking and computers in college so i'm no completely inept, so i don't believe it's something i'm doing wrong. But just in case i said i'd post here before bringing back both items to the shops.

Here is my setup.

1 WRT54G wireless router. I don't have an internet connection in the house so i don't have any cable going into the internet port of the router. Is this ok, does the wireless feature only work if you have an active internet connection. All i want to do is hook up my xbox to my pc and another few pc's round the house. At the moment though, i'm only trying to connect one pc to the router. The router is set up to broadcast the SSID and the radio is set to mixed for both b and g. The green light on the router indicating an active WLAN is on and so is the power. I have an ordinary ethernet link to my computer which is also showing as being active.

2 My Belkin wireless NIC is plugged into my PC and seems to be installed ok. Drivers aren't reporting any problems in Windows XP and the Belkin wireless utility is loading. Here is where the problem is though. When i do a search for all available wireless networks i doesn't show up my router. Encryption is disabled on both devices. I also have an ordinary network card connected to PC which is connected to the swith part of the router as indicated above. This line works correctly as i'm able to configure the router through the web interface.

3. I've tried disconnecting the ethernet connection just to see if this was the problem, but no such luck. I've even tried entering the SSID explicitly and bypassing the search function but this doesn't work either.

My only conclusion is that either the router or NIC is not working but there both brand new items. Has anyone got any ideas.

Thanks in advance.

vibe666

okay.

turn off the router, and forget about the wireless nic for now.

perform a hard factory reset of the router by holding in the rest button on the back for 30 seconds. during this time the lights on the front should go through a flashing sequence 2 or 3 times.

plug out the power on the router.

plug a wired ethernet cable into socket 4 of the router and put the other end into your pc.

turn on the pc. when it's booted, plug in the router and check to see if you are getting an ip address from the router. it should be something like 192.168.1.100 depending on the defaults on the router.

log into the router by opening internet explorer and typing the routers ip address in the address bar. it should be 192.168.1.1, but you can check my opening a command prompt and typing ipconfig/all and making a note of the default gateway.

anyway, you should see the user/password box. the username and password should both just be 'admin' (without the quotes).

log in and take a look around your settings.

the main problem i had with wireless connectivity was the wireless channel having lots of interference. i got the hyperwrt firmware and changed the channel to 13 which i knew would be clear as most wireless equipment does not work past channel 11. anyway, might be worth a try.

also might be worth downloading netstumbler and see if you can detect any wireless activity at all.

qBot

I'll try that.

I did the hard reset already and i've been able to log into the router without putting any username in and just using the password "admin". I thought this was a bit strange but it worked. Ill try what u said though.

qBot

Why did u suggest using socket 4. Is there something special bout that.

vibe666

its just what linksys recommend.

if you're able to get into the router via the wired connection then you can ignore the first bit of my last post. i thought you couldn't get into it at all.

try netstumbler on the wireless machine, and see if you can even see the router at all.

other than that if you've got the access open with no encryption, the only thing i can think to do is change the wireless channel.

you might also want to make sure you have the latest firmware for both the AP and the wifi card, just to be sure.

i'd have recommended getting all your equipment from the one manufacturer, which although it shouldn't be necessary can often help prevent connection problems due to tiny hardware/software inconsistencies between manufacturers (or so I've read).

a good place to start for linksys help is www.linksysinfo.org. they have some good forums to help you get going and lots of guides etc. too.

qBot

No luck. Tried everything u said last night but i'm still having problems. Netstumbler reported nothing. I think ill get one of the admin guys in the college to take a look at if i can find one with spare time. Atleast they can test the stuff agains their equipment and see if it's working or not. Thanks for you help.

vibe666

try re-installing the drivers for the nic, but then uninstalling the management software that normally comes with it and letting windows wireless zero configuration thing take control.

sometimes they fight over control and then neither will work.

it's a shame you're all the way down there in limerick, i have a linksys wmp54g pci card which is the partner card for the wrt54g. we could have tried it as a test.

maybe theres a boardster in your neck of the woods who might oblige you with one, or something similar for an afternoon to have a go.

qBot

Well, i had a long night last night. I spent the whole time trying to get the damn thing to work. To cut a long story short, i just brought my computer into the other room and it worked straight away. Problem is, i need it to work from my room. I then tried moving the computer around my room and it worked for a little while but then at about 1 last night it stopped working again. Funnily enough the first time it started working in my room was when i accidentally left the aerial off the card at the back. I then rebooted, put the aerial back on and it worked until one o clock. But for some strange reason it stopped working again. I tried turning off all the appliances in my room, the emersion but nothing worked. I tried different channels, moving the computer away from my monitor ( which interferes with my fm radio). I'm thinking now, that maybe it's the person in the room in the house next door that's causing the problem. It's a semi-detached house and i'm at the side with the house next door. Any ideas vibe? When i did get it working, i put my router down stairs and had an 80% signal from my wireless card to it.

Edit: Thanks for your help vibe, any other ideas are greatly appreciated. I'm thinking now maybe i should have gotten one of those usb wifi dongles. Might have afforded me greater manouverability with my aerial.

qBot

I've also tried putting the router withing 5 feet of the Wireless NIC but still no luck. It doesn't report anything..

qBot

No ideas anyone.Surely there is someone out there who knows what's going on or atleast has the same problem.

qBot

Well to wrap things up. I brought back the wireless nic to dixons again! This time i returned it for a usb wireless g card. Thing works perfectly now and i'm constantly getting "excellent" reception. So i think it must have been a problem with my computer and pci based wireless cards. Who knows.

qBot

Your going to absolutely going to love this. I've bought another one of these pci cards off a friend for another computer. You'd think i'd learn my lesson wouldn't you. So I said fcuk it, ill give it a lash in my computer just to see. Low and behold it works. Can't believe it. I changed my motherboard in the last week so I put it down to that. Next thing at boot up two hours ago, I notice at the bios screen my 2000+(1666mhz) cpu is only running at 1250mhz. I forgot to change the fsb speed to 266. So I changed it and as soon as i boot into windows the wireless card stops working again. Im sceptical at first so i tried rebooting a few times. Still doesn't work. I changed back to 1250 and it starts working. One more time for good measure I change it back to 1666 not believing that this could have been the cause. It stops working. I'm now back at 1250mhz, it's the only way to have it working. I've contacted belkin and they don't have a clue. They're after passing it on to they're research staff and i should have a response in a few days. But what a reason though. I've wasted long hours on this one and i really only discovered the problem by chance. Amazing

lazygit

possibility that there's not enough power coming from your powersupply to run everything? what watt is your powersupply?

qBot

I got a 350 watt becool psu. Should be more than enough. The guys at belkin reckon it's a problem with synchronisation with the router. That when running at high speed whatever way my computer is it can't synchronize with the card