Hi everyone: I’m having an extremely frustrating problem connecting to my Netgear DG384G v3 wireless router in my flat. In short: Ever since I reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP Pro, internet browsers do not detect a connection to the internet despite a wireless connection being detected in the network connections (and the icon in the system tray) when my wireless adapter is plugged into my PC. Connection problems only occurred after the reformat, another PC in my flat connects wirelessly to our router with no problems (before, during & after the time I reformatted; I’m posting this using his PC) and the router config settings have definitely not been changed in any way so its not a router problem. It appears that the wireless adapter is able to detect a signal from the router but the router is not sending information to the adapter (I can’t even connect to the router setup IP address 192.168.0.1)? More detailed: 1) I wiped the PC’s harddrive then reinstalled Windows XP Pro – I thought the recovery disk would have drivers with it (like others I’d used) but it didn’t so I had to manually find nVidia chipset & 3com Ethernet controller drivers and SP1 (for USB 2.0 functionality), download them on another PC and transfer and install them on mine. I got SP2, this didn’t change anything, I changed back to SP1, still no change to connectivity. 2) When my Netgear WG111 v2 wireless adapter is plugged into a USB port, Windows recognises it as a device connected to the PC. 3) My Netgear DG384G v3 router is working normally – the power light is on, the internet light is on and the wireless light is on, all are green, the internet light blinks intermittently as normal, the other two are solid. 4) When the wireless adapter is plugged into the PC, wireless networks are detected and I can detect and connect to my Netgear router using the same WEP key and SSID as before (set at the time of router setup and not changed since). Bubble comes up with “Wireless Network Connection 2 (NETGEAR), Speed: 54Mbps, Signal Strength: Very Good” 5) When a browser is opened and set to any website the DNS error screen (“The page cannot be displayed, The page you are looking for is currently unavailable” etc) in IE, “Server not found, Firefox can't find the server at www.google.co.uk” in Firefox 6) When opening Internet Explorer, the bar at the bottom of the window displays “Detecting proxy settings” for a few seconds before the DNS error comes up. 7) The router settings cannot be opened via a browser, either by using the router setup CD or by typing http://192.168.0.1 into the address bar. The same error msg is displayed in IE, Firefox displays “Unable to connect, Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at 192.168.0.1” 8) I can connect to the router setting page in the above way using my flatmate’s wireless connection to the same router. 9) Opening up the properties of the wireless connection shows that data packets are sent but not received, e.g. after leaving the wireless connection on for 4 hours – 15000 packets sent, 0 packets received 10) I tried bridging the wireless connection with the 1394 Net Adapter connection in “Network Connections/LAN or High Speed Internet”, this had no effect. reversing this also had no effect. 11) All settings (IP etc) were set to be automatically provided, no effect. 12) I looked at my flatmate’s connection settings (IP address, subnet mask, DHCP server etc) and manually specified as many of them as I could on my connection, no effect. 13) I used my flatmate’s connection to go into the router settings and manually specify my PC’s Physical address (MAC no.) as being always allowed to connect, no effect. 14) I effectively turned off the router’s firewall (by setting it to allow incoming connections on all ports), no effect. Changed it back, no effect. 15) I removed the WEP, no effect (not likely to be the cause anyway, since I can connect to router using the WEP key as described). 16) All other functionality of the PC is 100% normal; no devices are listed as not having drivers installed in device manager. PC is running SP1, ISP is AOL though I have been unable to find the AOL CD so I’ve not tried reconfiguring with that (but I didn’t use the AOL CD to start-up in the first place when the internet worked before the reformat) The fact that no data is being received in the connection properties thing seems to suggest that the router is not recognising the PC or some such thing that is preventing the PC access the internet connection despite detecting and apparently connecting to the router’s wireless signal. Perhaps some networking device is not working / hasn’t had software installed for it? I would appreciate it if anyone could help, if I’ve left out any information you might need to solve the problem them please let me know. I’d also like lists of any possible things it might be (e.g. suggesting to check the firewall even though I’ve said I’ve checked it and it didn’t have an effect) just incase I’ve missed something on one of my checks that someone knows to have caused a similar problem from experience. I’ve not yet tried wiring the router into the back of my PC since that would involve temporarily moving the PC into the living room and since the problem doesn’t appear to be with the router and it’s the wireless connection that’s giving problems I don’t see what wiring it up would achieve, even if it could connect to the net that way. Of course if I’m wrong, please let me know & why connecting to the router via an Ethernet cable could help my wireless connectivity when the router is setup and working already. I’m all ears. Kind Regards, Michael Barker

I don't see mention of a Firewall. Do you have one enabled? Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

No, there's no firwall installed on the PC and its currently running SP1 so there's no Windows firewall either. Changing the router's firewall settings had no effect, as noted. A IPCONFIG/ALL was suggested on another forum, here's the reults: Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. C:\Documents and Settings\Dex>ipconfig/all Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : DESKTOP Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0C-6E-BB-08-B2 Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 3: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Description . . . . . . . . . . . : 3Com 3C920B-EMB Integrated Fast Ethernet Controller Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-26-54-12-B7-8E Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection 2: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NETGEAR WG111v2 54Mbps Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0F-B5-B8-54-DE Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration IP Address. . . : 169.254.83.247 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Your wireless card is not obtaining an IP address. is the Wireless Zero Configuration Service started? Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

The wireless ethernet adapter IP address 169.254.83.247 is assigned by windows when there is no IP address assigned to the adapter by DHCP. This means you are not getting an IP address assigned as Jennifer stated. Compaq Presario SR1720NX Desktop Computer AT&T SBC Yahoo DSL Home Linksys Router/2 computers

I'm not sure what the Wireless Zero Configuration Service is or how to start it if its not running (I'll check the running processes list when I get home). I've also ran in IPCONFIG/RENEW, it didn't work: Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. C:\Documents and Settings\Dex>ipconfig/release Windows IP Configuration Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection 2: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Autoconfiguration IP Address. . . : 169.254.83.247 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : C:\Documents and Settings\Dex>ipconfig/renew Windows IP Configuration An error occurred while renewing interface Wireless Network Connection 2: unable to contact your DHCP server. Request has timed out. I’m guessing this gives some indication of the root of the problem? I should probably of noted that when I was manually specifying the IP address etc I couldn’t find a menu for specifying the address of the DHCP server, tho the connection was set to be DHCP enabled. The DHCP server on my flatmate’s connection to the router is 192.168.0.1 (the router’s IP address), that address along with the DNS etc are all provided automatically on his PC. If a possible solution to this involves modifying the DHCP address or settings to get an IP address assigned could you please explicitly say what menus these settings are changed in because I couldn’t find any DHCP setting menus when I tried to manually specify all of the addresses, I have to access the internet on other computers so this just saves time because I can only check the forums a few times a day. (the following is something I posted on another forum earlier but forgot to post here) When I manually specified all the connection settings (IP address etc) to be the same as on my flatemates PC which can connect to the router (pt 12) this had no effect, I think the problem is related to the PC not being able to communicate with the router past picking up its wireless signal (if the router is not providing the PC with an IP address & no data packets are listed as being received). If I manually specify the IP etc settings to ones that are correct and thus should allow the PC to connect to the net wirelessly (ie the effect of having the correct settings automatically provided to it by the router) but it still doesn't (this is happened and what I expect to happen again) then what does this mean? Is there a software or hardware component/setting that would somehow stop the router recognising the PC's presence or stop 2-way communication between the PC and router even tho the PC can detect the router's presence with the wireless adapter and connect to its wireless network using the WEP key? I have a feeling the problem lies in this area, also maybe to do with the fact that due to the reformat the PC effectivly has the earliest version of XP-Pro running with SP1 installed & no other windows updates from between XP's 1st release and SP1's release - was there a later Windows update between XP & early SP1 and SP2 that might have adressed something like this? Before the reformat the connection worked fine on a system that had all the updates post-SP1 but not SP2 or any of the post SP2 ones (due to a registry problem stopping SP2's install, the reason I eventually went for the reformat). Thanks again.

Just a thought: Is there some sort of application or client that XP uses to control DHCP and/or DNS function? If so, could it be possible that because my platform is (since the reformat) essentially a very early copy of XP-Pro that ONLY has SP1 installed on it and no other updates whatsoever that this DHCP service could either not be installed or not functioning in some way? If this is the case any ideas on how to find the relevant files for downloading, ie from Microsoft or just go for googling them. Thanks