Cannot get wi-fi connection on new router

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Rikkitic

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#1340644 10-Jul-2015 14:22

I have had another go at this but am at the point of giving up. I am reluctant to change router settings that I don't understand because we live at a rural location and the RBI is our link to the world (both Internet and phone). I don't want to risk losing that link altogether.

I have learned a little more, though. We have three laptops with wi-fi, as well as an additional mini-pc used for streaming. One laptop and the mini-pc are new and both run Windows 8.1. Both work fine. Two laptops are 10+ years old, with single-core Intel processors. The HP, running XP, worked on wi-fi with the old router but only works on LAN with the new one. The Toshiba, which came with XP but has been upgraded to Windows 7, won't work with either though it worked in the past.

There are two routers. One is the new Huawei gateway device. The other is a D-link connected by Ethernet cable that is used as a wi-fi extender. At present I cannot get either of the old laptops to work with the D-link, either LAN or wi-fi. Only the HP works with the new router, and only through the LAN. Both of the new machines running 8.1 work fine through the wi-fi.

All the computers that don't work give the same error, that they cannot detect a network (although the wi-fi signals are displayed as connected). I found a setting on the computers to connect even if the SSID isn't being broadcast, but that makes no difference.

Unless someone has an aha! moment I am inclined to just live with this for now. I don't just want to start changing things at random in the hope that something might work. I have got in big trouble in the past by doing that.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. If I ever get this working I will post the answer.

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mdf

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#1340658 10-Jul-2015 14:40

Couple of thoughts - have you tried with the second router disconnected? If the two routers aren't set up right, odd things can happen.

Second, and one of my more random problems, does the Huawei have any special characters in the SSID or password? I had one of the Vodafone branded Huawei ones and had an authentication problem. For me it would work with no security (so a bit unlike your issue) but as soon as I turned security on it went all screwy. Eventually (and it was very eventually) I worked out that if I had round brackets i.e. "()" in the password field it wouldn't authenticate. Changing it to square brackets fixed the problem. No idea why it's an issue and round brackets work fine on other routers.

Actually, thinking about it, it's obviously working if you have some notebooks working. What encryption are you using? Ideally (from a security perspective), it should be WPA2-PSK (AES). Having just checked, WPA2 isn't natively supported by XP, but there is a patch to enable it. Might be worth looking at?

Mattmannz

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#1340666 10-Jul-2015 15:00

Sounds like the issue is a combination of old hardware and old OS. If the new machines connect then there is obviously no issue with the new router.

Old wireless cards and OS's often don't support 802.11n and/or WPA2 which should be the minimum security setting.

Do you have a cellphone or something else you can connect to wifi? This will prove that it's the hardware.

Perhaps try going into device manager on those two machines that can't connect and post the wireless hardware specs.

Matt.

Jase2985

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#1340725 10-Jul-2015 16:00

make sure the wireless channel is not on something like 13 or 14. put it on 1, 6 or 11.

Rikkitic

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#1348454 21-Jul-2015 17:31

I finally have a result and I feel I should let everyone know what it is. I went away from this for awhile to do other things and gain a fresh perspective but then I really had to get it working. There was no problem with the router. One old laptop running Win 7 is now working fine on both wi-fi and Ethernet. The other running XP still only works on Ethernet but that is clearly an issue with that computer that could probably be fixed but I can't be bothered.

I'm not sure what the problem was but I changed a lot of things as I went along. Probably the most important change I made was updating the drivers for both the Ethernet and Wi-fi though that alone didn't fix it. Finally I discovered that I had disabled Internet connectivity in the firewall of one computer, which certainly wasn't helping! I can't remember when I did that. Anyway, at some point whatever wasn't working started working and when I changed the firewall setting everything worked. I'm just glad it's over.

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johnr

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#1348458 21-Jul-2015 17:33

You forgot you ' I had disabled Internet connectivity in the firewall ' really?

Mattmannz

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#1349462 21-Jul-2015 18:14

johnr - you should get a job in PR

Thanks for posting the results of your work and being honest about what the issues were.

Good to know you have it mostly sorted.

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sbiddle

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#1349468 21-Jul-2015 18:39

If XP isn't working it's probably the router using WPA2 AES (which is now the norm rather than the older TKIP which is obsolete) and the XP device doesn't support AES. It's a pretty common issue. Some newer hardware doesn't support TKIP, however if it does you can select this or select AES+TKIP, but it will impact your wireless performance.

Rikkitic

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#1349502 21-Jul-2015 20:17

johnr: You forgot you ' I had disabled Internet connectivity in the firewall ' really?

Yeah, I was hoping no-one would notice if I buried that deeply enough. But there were also other things going on. Initially another new laptop with Windows 8.1 wasn't working either, and later the XP laptop that had previously worked with Ethernet wouldn't. Now it does, just not the wi-fi. Having Internet disabled in the firewall on the other computer added to my confusion and made it a lot harder to figure out what was going on, but it wasn't the whole issue.

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Rikkitic

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#1349503 21-Jul-2015 20:18

Mattmannz: johnr - you should get a job in PR

Thanks for posting the results of your work and being honest about what the issues were.

Good to know you have it mostly sorted.

Thanks. I believe in being straight about things but I did feel pretty stupid when I discovered the firewall setting.

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Rikkitic

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#1349504 21-Jul-2015 20:21

sbiddle: If XP isn't working it's probably the router using WPA2 AES (which is now the norm rather than the older TKIP which is obsolete) and the XP device doesn't support AES. It's a pretty common issue. Some newer hardware doesn't support TKIP, however if it does you can select this or select AES+TKIP, but it will impact your wireless performance.

Thanks for the tip. From what I have since learned while trying to figure this out, I suspect that probably is the cause of the problem but I am no longer bothered about it. The laptop is old and tired and will now be replaced with the one that had the firewall issue, which is much better in all respects.

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johnr

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#1349506 21-Jul-2015 20:23

Rikkitic:
johnr: You forgot you ' I had disabled Internet connectivity in the firewall ' really?

Yeah, I was hoping no-one would notice if I buried that deeply enough. But there were also other things going on. Initially another new laptop with Windows 8.1 wasn't working either, and later the XP laptop that had previously worked with Ethernet wouldn't. Now it does, just not the wi-fi. Having Internet disabled in the firewall on the other computer added to my confusion and made it a lot harder to figure out what was going on, but it wasn't the whole issue.

10 points for being straight up but I LOL when I read it

sahilchraya

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#1353666 28-Jul-2015 19:01

can be hidden SSID
wifi not enabled
or router need a hard reset and a new setup.

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