I Think I Shot Myself In The Foot.

[juney4]

Well, I tried and tried but I’m at wits end…, which isn’t far from wits beginning. I recently inherited an older computer, which runs decently enough, and so I gave it to the kids for school homework and games. It has an ECS k7s5a motherboard –a 1.34Ghz processor and 1gb ram. I have a trendnet652 wireless n router on my computer so I thought I would get a cheap wireless pci card for this computer so I wouldn’t have to run wires from my computer to this one which even thought it would only be about 15 feet away, it would be in another room. I found a Ralink 802.11n wireless pci lan card on ebay for $12. bucks so I went for it. It said that it would hook up on the Windows xp pro sp1 (I haven’t got it hooked up to the internet yet for sp2-3). I put it in the pci slot, buttoned it up, turned it on. The act and link led’s came on. Good. I pulled out the cd containing the drivers and stuck it in. The drivers loaded up and the leds went out. Now, the hardware detected my router at 100% signal strength and everything looked okay but I couldn’t connect. I unloaded the drivers and the leds came on.It was back and forth. I load the drivers, no leds. Unload the drivers, leds back on. So I tried to find other drivers thru driversguide, Microsoft, open drivers, zdnet, you name it. I spent 4 hours on this and I can’t figure out what to do. Do I have to throw this card away? Device manager says this thing is working properly and there are no conflicts. The kids are looking at me as if to say, you dummy! If anyone has an idea please let me know!! Oh yeah if it is the driver it’s a rt2860 dated 1/30/2008 ver.1.1.1.0 and as I stated I tried to find a latter one but I’ve failed so far.

Juney

[lanoth]

If the computer is just for your kids, and there not doing anything to big, i know its a long shot, but why not just try it with SP1 and see if it is a card problem or a driver issue. maby that will work

[juney4]

Hi lanoth,

Thanks for answering. The windows xp I installed on the machine was installed with sp2 as the disc was slipstreamed to include it. But how do I use it to find out if it's a card or driver issue? I'm not a tech person but trying to learn enough to be self sufficient.

Thanks!

[simpswr]

Does your wireless router have security enabled? . . Did you put in the key?

[juney4]

Hi Rich!

Yes to both questions. I enabled wpa encryption and put the key in. It just spins and spins then stops and waits for me to try again. Like I say I believe it has something to do with the drivers. As soon as I install the drivers on the manufacturers disk the act and link leds on the metal face of the card go out and I cannot find alternate drivers for it and I don't really know how to test the drivers outside of what I read in device manager. Thanks.

J4

[simpswr]

I would disable the wpa and see if you connect

[juney4]

I can't believe it!! That worked!? But how do I enable some sort of encryption on the network. I'll try WPA-2 or that failing I'll have to try WEP but if there is something else I must do please let me know. Again, I thank everyone for their efforts and Happy Halloween!

J4

[simpswr]

That tells you the mechanics are ok . . now set up wpa or wpa-psk and it should work fine ( as long as both devices support it )

[johnwill]

I'd use WPA if you're having problems with WPA2. Many older devices don't support WPA2, but most should support WPA.

[techbytes]

If you still can't connect to WPA/WPA2, check and see if you have Norton antivirus running. If you do, try and disable the network threat protection. Happened to me on my laptop.

[juney4]

To Everyone....

.....that did 'er! After the drivers kicked in I started with WPA-2 and I didn't have to go any further. The encryption wonked over smooth as silk with no problems and now the "Network" is doing fine. I did want to ask one question. I have 4 computers and two game systems linked to this router (trendnet 652), 2 computers and a PS3 by wire and now 2 computers and a WII wireless. Is this too much? Am I using up bandwidth and slowing the system down? Everything works, I'm just curious and trying to learn at the same time. Again, thanks to all for their input and it gives me something to try if I run into something future-ly!

J4

[gcavan]

I have 4 computers and two game systems linked to this router (trendnet 652), 2 computers and a PS3 by wire and now 2 computers and a WII wireless. Is this too much? Am I using up bandwidth and slowing the system down?

You will have to answer this yourself. Monitor the system for a bit and you will see. It really all depends on the usage cycles. Normal internet browsing, short downloads, etc will have a negligible effect. But if several bandwidth hogs (streaming video and online gaming are the main culprits) are going at the same time, you will most definitely take a hit. Of course, this means that your network slows down right in prime time.

Another thing that may have an affect is the router itself. Specifically, how it prioritizes connections. In a perfect world, the router would share the available bandwidth equally between each connection, or even allow you to set higher or lower priorities.

[johnwill]

Wireless networking operates on a contention basis with all connections sharing the bandwidth. Given that WiFi is also half-duplex, by the time you connect 4-5 workstations, it's getting pretty slow for anything but simple web browsing. Forget about file sharing, that will be painfully slow. Wireless is not that fast for file sharing if you have a single connection.

[juney4]

Thanks, Johnwill,

That answers all my questions and directs my actions in the future. Thanks again for all your help and the help of everyone involved. I really appreciate it.
J4