Hi

I've just bought a new laptop (Dell Inspiron-sorry i don't know the model of
my wireless card) and I am trying to connect it to my Orange wireless router
without success. The latop uses windows vista home premium. I have a desktop
PC with windows xp connected to the router through the ethernet cable and an
xbox 360 which connects wirelessly - both work fine. I can get my laptop to
connect using the ethernet cable but not wirelessly.

Using the connect to a network box my laptop picks up my router, i can
select it and click on connect. It then asks me to enter the security key.
I enter the WEP key shown on my router but then it comes back with 'windows
cannot connect to network'. Ive made sure my wireless card is on (using Fn
F2 keys) and I know my router works wirelessly as my xbox works wirelessly.

I tried calling Orange who went through numerous ways of trying to connect
but none worked - the guy admitted he had limited knowledge of vista but
thought it could be a conflict between the vista way of connecting and the
dell card so sugggested calling dell. We did that and they could not get it
to work and said it was a problem with the router and that it could not
connect multiple devices, which i do not believe as the manual for the orange
router shows multiple devices and orange themselves did not think that was
the preoblem.

Basically i don't know what to do and am left with a laptop which if i want
to use on the net still needs to be used at my desk.

Sorry for the long post but i thought the more information i could give the
better. I'd really appreciate it if anybody had any ideas.

Thanks

Neil

My sympathies! I had precisely this problem trying to get a new Sony sz1xpc
laptop to work with an Orange Livebox wireless router wirelessly and
eventually concluded that until Orange sort their problems out I would ditch
their router, bought a BT 2091 "unlocked" Voyager off Ebay and the Sony
laptop worked immediately. I stayed with Orange BB.

"neil2080" wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hi
>
> I've just bought a new laptop (Dell Inspiron-sorry i don't know the model of
> my wireless card) and I am trying to connect it to my Orange wireless router
> without success. The latop uses windows vista home premium. I have a desktop
> PC with windows xp connected to the router through the ethernet cable and an
> xbox 360 which connects wirelessly - both work fine. I can get my laptop to
> connect using the ethernet cable but not wirelessly.
>
> Using the connect to a network box my laptop picks up my router, i can
> select it and click on connect. It then asks me to enter the security key.
> I enter the WEP key shown on my router but then it comes back with 'windows
> cannot connect to network'. Ive made sure my wireless card is on (using Fn
> F2 keys) and I know my router works wirelessly as my xbox works wirelessly.
>
> I tried calling Orange who went through numerous ways of trying to connect
> but none worked - the guy admitted he had limited knowledge of vista but
> thought it could be a conflict between the vista way of connecting and the
> dell card so sugggested calling dell. We did that and they could not get it
> to work and said it was a problem with the router and that it could not
> connect multiple devices, which i do not believe as the manual for the orange
> router shows multiple devices and orange themselves did not think that was
> the preoblem.
>
> Basically i don't know what to do and am left with a laptop which if i want
> to use on the net still needs to be used at my desk.
>
> Sorry for the long post but i thought the more information i could give the
> better. I'd really appreciate it if anybody had any ideas.
>
> Thanks
>
> Neil[/color]

I had the same problem but solved it by downloading the file from microsoft
which allows machines running XP to be recognised by machines running
Vista.Then alter personal firewall settings on machine running Vista to
confirm the machine you are joining on the network is to be "trusted".The
file to download can be found in Help for networking.

"mikeclem" wrote:
[color=blue]
> My sympathies! I had precisely this problem trying to get a new Sony sz1xpc
> laptop to work with an Orange Livebox wireless router wirelessly and
> eventually concluded that until Orange sort their problems out I would ditch
> their router, bought a BT 2091 "unlocked" Voyager off Ebay and the Sony
> laptop worked immediately. I stayed with Orange BB.
>
> "neil2080" wrote:
>[color=green]
> > Hi
> >
> > I've just bought a new laptop (Dell Inspiron-sorry i don't know the model of
> > my wireless card) and I am trying to connect it to my Orange wireless router
> > without success. The latop uses windows vista home premium. I have a desktop
> > PC with windows xp connected to the router through the ethernet cable and an
> > xbox 360 which connects wirelessly - both work fine. I can get my laptop to
> > connect using the ethernet cable but not wirelessly.
> >
> > Using the connect to a network box my laptop picks up my router, i can
> > select it and click on connect. It then asks me to enter the security key.
> > I enter the WEP key shown on my router but then it comes back with 'windows
> > cannot connect to network'. Ive made sure my wireless card is on (using Fn
> > F2 keys) and I know my router works wirelessly as my xbox works wirelessly.
> >
> > I tried calling Orange who went through numerous ways of trying to connect
> > but none worked - the guy admitted he had limited knowledge of vista but
> > thought it could be a conflict between the vista way of connecting and the
> > dell card so sugggested calling dell. We did that and they could not get it
> > to work and said it was a problem with the router and that it could not
> > connect multiple devices, which i do not believe as the manual for the orange
> > router shows multiple devices and orange themselves did not think that was
> > the preoblem.
> >
> > Basically i don't know what to do and am left with a laptop which if i want
> > to use on the net still needs to be used at my desk.
> >
> > Sorry for the long post but i thought the more information i could give the
> > better. I'd really appreciate it if anybody had any ideas.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Neil[/color][/color]

I took my laptop round my brother's house who has a BT Voyager and it
connected fine. So i rang Orange back and (after waiting 45minutes in a
queue) spoke to a different person. Straight away after mentioning it was on
a vista system they said i needed to change the security settings on the
router. They gave instructions on accessing the router's settings pages
(using an IP address and entering 'admin' as the password and username - i
had the laptop on the internet using the ethernet cable) and changed it from
WPA/WEP to WPA only. There are help files on the help and support section of
the orange website which shows you how to do this.

I then tried connecting as I had before and it said unsuccesful - but try
opening IE to complete connection. Opening IE did indeed connect to the
internet. I said thank you, put the phone down and about 5 minutes later the
connection went down. Going through the connection process started it
working again, but again a few minutes later it disconnects.

This just keeps happening constantly. Does anybody have any ideas? I'll
try ringing them again after work but it takes ages to get through. I'm
worried it may just be a problem with vista and they won't be able to help
any further.

Neil

"mikeclem" wrote:
[color=blue]
> My sympathies! I had precisely this problem trying to get a new Sony sz1xpc
> laptop to work with an Orange Livebox wireless router wirelessly and
> eventually concluded that until Orange sort their problems out I would ditch
> their router, bought a BT 2091 "unlocked" Voyager off Ebay and the Sony
> laptop worked immediately. I stayed with Orange BB.
>
> "neil2080" wrote:
>[color=green]
> > Hi
> >
> > I've just bought a new laptop (Dell Inspiron-sorry i don't know the model of
> > my wireless card) and I am trying to connect it to my Orange wireless router
> > without success. The latop uses windows vista home premium. I have a desktop
> > PC with windows xp connected to the router through the ethernet cable and an
> > xbox 360 which connects wirelessly - both work fine. I can get my laptop to
> > connect using the ethernet cable but not wirelessly.
> >
> > Using the connect to a network box my laptop picks up my router, i can
> > select it and click on connect. It then asks me to enter the security key.
> > I enter the WEP key shown on my router but then it comes back with 'windows
> > cannot connect to network'. Ive made sure my wireless card is on (using Fn
> > F2 keys) and I know my router works wirelessly as my xbox works wirelessly.
> >
> > I tried calling Orange who went through numerous ways of trying to connect
> > but none worked - the guy admitted he had limited knowledge of vista but
> > thought it could be a conflict between the vista way of connecting and the
> > dell card so sugggested calling dell. We did that and they could not get it
> > to work and said it was a problem with the router and that it could not
> > connect multiple devices, which i do not believe as the manual for the orange
> > router shows multiple devices and orange themselves did not think that was
> > the preoblem.
> >
> > Basically i don't know what to do and am left with a laptop which if i want
> > to use on the net still needs to be used at my desk.
> >
> > Sorry for the long post but i thought the more information i could give the
> > better. I'd really appreciate it if anybody had any ideas.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Neil[/color][/color]

I am having the same problem with a brand new dell laptop using Vista
Ultimate and a Linksys router. Dell tells me it is a Vista driver
issue, and should be fixed when a new driver is released "within a
month". Unfortunately, I am just going to return the new laptop,
because I can't be without a wireless internet connection for that
long.

I have the same problem. DELL told me the same thing, but the guy said the
driver was going to be released on March 12.

"teddeee@aol.com" wrote:
[color=blue]
>
>
> I am having the same problem with a brand new dell laptop using Vista
> Ultimate and a Linksys router. Dell tells me it is a Vista driver
> issue, and should be fixed when a new driver is released "within a
> month". Unfortunately, I am just going to return the new laptop,
> because I can't be without a wireless internet connection for that
> long.
>
>[/color]