my wireless network connetcion to my laptop was working, but now cannot connect...?

Question

so i got the laptop for christmas today. i hooked up the wireless router to my main computer(parents computer) nd everything was fine all day long up til about an hour ago. whats wrong? it says that this program called "Network Magic", which i needed to connect my laptop [i dont know if you are familiar with it], but my laptop says it cannot connect to Maggies Network(thats the name of my network) the internet connection to this computer(parents computer) is fine, its just the laptop that cannot get a connection.

its deffinately not a distance issue. i a m running vista on the laptop and XP on the parent's. i tried to view networks and mine came up under favorite networks, but i tried reconnecting and it wont work. i tried restarting many times... wont work. i dont know what to do next.

Answer 1

Is the parent's computer wireless as well? If that is working and is wireless then you can assume the wireless is working fine and it is a problem that is on the laptop.

You didn't mention what operating system you are running. If you are running XP or Vista (windows) then right click on the wireless networking icon and choose "Show available wireless networks" Select your network and see if you can reconnect to it.

Also try doing this close to the wireless router to make sure it isn't an interference or distance issue.

Answer 2

Do you have "ESSID Broadcast" enabled or disabled? (go to your router admin via a web browser page, type in http://192.168.2.0 or 1) If it is disabled, your router is hidden from the neighborhood, another security feature.

To log on to this hidden network from your laptop, simply attempt to logon to a known secure wi-fi near you, and of course, it will ask for the networks name, type in your networks name EXACTLY as you named it, including any capital or small case letters.

Then, it will reject you, of course. BUT now you can "see" your network, so try connecting to a different network, this will now show your network, and you should be able to login :)

You see, when you turn OFF ESSID Broadcast, your router is not going to "show" your network's name on the air, and so of course, you won't "see it" from your laptop, so you must trick your laptop into seeing it, get it? :)

Good luck, this trick ALWAYS works for me on my network :)
(every time your laptop looses or drops the connection, you might have to do this, or only if the laptop was shut off for awhile and then turned back on)

Answer 3

You don't need Netwrk Magic to connect. I have removed it from several customer's computers without incident.

I am assuming that you have the encryption key (WEP or WPA) set properly. Does your router do MAC address filtering?

Answer 4

Make sure that your workgroups are the same for all computers.