After a long and sad battle, my router died. Thanks to those who helped on the laptop forum - but it was the router - not my machine. I guess my wife's laptop was too old to even detect there was a problem.

So now I have this new router, and my errors have vanished. But I have a new problem - wireless. We don't use wireless except on rare occasions - e.g. as backup - but with Wireless N that may change when we acquire new laptops - which my wife will do this year.

Anyway her system still connects as it always has. It's mine that doesn't. And I confess to being a bear of very little brain when it comes to this stuff. In fiddling I've got very confused between the router and me.

My wife's system still works. Mine doesn't. To complicate life, I did the original install from my PC. I then decided (perhaps naievely that I didn't need the Linksys software installed. For both networks it had added both cable and wireless drivers. Deinstalling removed those. Cable still works - don't know whether reinstalling will help with wireless - I figure not because what happens when I connect at work?

I've been working on this for a couple of days - and got myself very confused. I can't even remember whether WEP or WPA is the newer security standard. And I seem to have two new 8-digit pins - and now I'm confused as to which one it means when it asks for them. One is for the router, the other my laptop - and I do know which is which. But I didn't even know the one on my laptop was there - presumably because the old router wasn't up to it and never asked for it. Now I've tried entering them both at times - just not sure I need to enter the laptop one anywhere - but maybe the router needs it for access.

I hope I've given enough info that one of you can say - boy - what an amateur - and then tell me that I've got to do something real simple to get thinsg working.

Thanks