Wireless connection issue

[WildxYak]

This seemed like the best forum and the best place to ask!

I have an oldish family use laptop (Toshiba Equium P300) for general surfing (spec too low for RS) and when its first turned on it will show the good/excellent connection but with 'limited connectivity' and won't actually connect or let me access the internet. The only way I can get past this is resetting the wireless modem which is a royal pain and usually inconvenient as me or my brother also play XBL.

Any ideas on how to just connect?

 

Also, the laptop has a (preinstalled) program called 'Toshiba ConfigFree'. It looks virtually useless and generally just annoys me but is related to wireless internet connection and I'm not sure if its necessary or not. Any advice would be great.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Alex Sage]

You should be able to uninstall the toshiba thing. Just make sure you have the official drivers on hand because a lot of wireless drivers include wireless management stuff some odd reason. It may actually be the problem so I would say try switching to the official drivers for the wireless.

 

Also if it's that old maybe try setting your router to something 102.11b or g instead of n. Note this may result in a decrease in speed on your other devices depending on your internet connection. Or, lastly you can try usb wireless dongle (their like $20 for a cheaper one).

[Randox]

My first guess would be your laptop is simply not getting an ip address. Either it's not being assigned, or it's having trouble getting one. I can't tell you how to fix that off the top of my head, but you can try assigning it one manually.

 

To see if this is the problem, when you connect and get the limited access, check the network status. In XP you right clikc the network icon in the task bar, and select status. For 7, left click to get the available network list, and right click your network. Vista is one or the other. On the status window there should be a details button or tab, which gives you a list of, among other things, your (IPv4) address, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS server. If your unable to get an ip address, some or all of the numbers will be zero.

 

Alternatively, open up command prompt and type in "ipconfig", hit enter, and you'll get a list containing those same pieces of information. Some of them will be blank, the ones I listed are the ones your immediately interested in.

 

If your address is blank, or 0.0.0.0, then you have no internal IP address, and so no connection to the router. The first thing you can try is, in command prompt, type "ipconfig /renew" which will tell your computer to try and renew the connection. If it works, you'll have an address and a working connection. If not, your going to have to set one. To do this, you need to get to Wireless Network Connection Properties. On windows 7, from the status window where you can get details, there is a properties button on the bottom left (not wireless properties). Otherwise, you need to find the network adapters in one of the network windows (which like to change on every version of windows) and right click it for properties.

 

Once you have this window open, there should be a box under "This connection is using" with your wirelss adapter listed it, and under it a larger box listing a whole bunch of items. You want "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)". Left click it once, then click on the properties button under the list. From here, you can slect to either get settings automatically, or set them manually. You want it to be manual.

 

There are two get the numbers you need. You can reboot your modem and get a network connection, and then look up the 4 items I listed following the instructions above, and write them all down. This is the sure way to get numbers that will work. For the benefit of a situation where this might not be possible, even with a limited network you should have had an address other than a blank or 0.0.0.0 for the default gateway. This is your router ip address, and aside from being your default gateway, is also your DNS server. For your IP address, you need the first, second, and fourth numbers of your default gateway. On just about every router on this planet, that will be 192.168.x.1 (I'm not sure if it's allowed to be different). Where the x is, you can put in any number from 0 to 255. Here your going to have to guess. You should probably pick something in the 10's to 40's, and don't go to 50 or higher or you might be out of your routers valid range. If when you apply the settings you get an ip conflict error, try another number.

 

Hopefully that is clear enough to get through. I used to use this trick on one of my laptops which could only get an ip address at school from an Ethernet cable, so I would get an ip address that way and then enter it in manually to use the wireless.