Trying to set up a wireless network

Hi. I have a wireless router that I think I've set up correctly. I got everything working and was able to connect to it using my laptop the very first night I set it up. The next morning, without messing with my settings at all, I was unable to connect. My mom can connect with her laptop just fine, letting the IP settings assign themselves automatically.

My problem, I think lies in my IP address. When using Windows little 'repair' option, it gets up to trying to renew my IP address and then just gets hung up and never achieves doing so. Doing an ipconfig /renew says that my "media is disconnected".

Someone suggested manually setting an IP address - however, I have no idea what to put in "subnet mask", "default gateway", and "preferred DNS server".

Are you sure you wireless card in your laptop is one. My brothers shuts itself down on him after every reboot(thus anytime his computer restarts he has to repress the button to turn on the wireless card). In addition it isn't unheard of for the card to be accidently turned off by you or someone else who uses your laptop.

Or at least that is what my knowledge of 'media disconnected' errors and wireless cards goes.


As for setting a default IP. It is fairly simple if your network is just set up with the defaults.

Most routers I have come across utilize the 192.168.1.xxx scheme for ip's. The Default Subnet mask is generally 255.255.255.0 and the default gateway would be your router's IP address which is generally 192.168.1.1 with the routers I have come across. And the DNS is usually fine to be set to the router's IP as well.

Hmm... I put in all the stuff you said, and tried to connect, and success! It connected. But then it disconnected. I've tried several times, and about 4 seconds after connecting it disconnects. A pop-under says that it's possible that my network is denying access to my computer. I have my router settings open in front of me and I can't find anywhere that it wouldn't let me in by. The IP I selected (192.168.1.110) is within its allowance. I restarted my router and it still does the same thing. Any tips?

Hmm... now that is a tricky one.

What is your router brand, model no., and firmware version?


The only times I have seen such an issue was fixed by upgrading the router's firmware. It was a netgear router(which once again is the only time I have seen it).

This is my uncle's old router. It's a Linksys something or other. 11S4 is somewhere.

I updated the firmware (I had actually downloaded the firmware earlier, but didn't actually think that I needed to install it via the router menu). Things work... for now. Thank you so much for your help!

If you ever want to go to specified IPs for different machines, you can find out the subnet mask and gateway by opening a command prompt (the dos looking window!) and typing ipconfig on a machine that is successfully connected. Usually they will get their own dns from your ISP, but you can use third party ones like OpenDNS.com's

Try changing your computer's name. *shrug*