Less Wires 2

Yipee it works!

Checked the phase of the moon, lit 7 black candles, stripped naked, took a bowl of fresh goats blood and smeared on the symbols of power, danced widdershin's around the device of electrickery until commune with the daemons of the internet was achieved. Cleared up the ectoplasm afterwards...

Or I may as well have done - somehow I got the thing working in just over an hour. Not bad for me.

Bought the card from PC world for 20 notes. Asked a dishwasher salesman if I could get a refund if I discovered that I'd bought a device that wasn't suitable. He told me that they would, but would keep 10 percent. Got a second opinion off a car salesman to check the compatibility of a Belkin Wireless card with an Orange/Wanadoo livebox ADSL modem/router. He started with "think of your router as Radio City, and the cards as different makes of radio that you tune in with". Actually that's not too bad an analogy now that I think about it. Basically he was saying that any brand of card should connect.

I ran the installation disk (which installed the driver for the card) and invoked the Belkin Wireless Utility.

Using the utility I entered the name of our Wireless Network, and the WEP key.

The utility detected our network, but surprise surprise it wouldn't connect.

I ensured that the "Windows Zero Configuration Service" was running, set it to 'Automatic' and restarted it. Still no joy.

Then I discovered the most useful part of the Belkin Wireless Utility - checkbox that says - "Windows Wireless Network Configuration".

I ticked this, then with the aid of the Orange (ex-Wanadoo) online support guide (via another connected machine) I ran through the configuration process for 3rd party (i.e. not supplied by Orange/Wanadoo) wireless devices that I used the last time.

First of all I wasn't connecting. Then after a couple of double checks, and re-entering of the WEP key I rebooted. This time I was connecting, but the connection message said 'Limited or no Connectivity'.
Hmmmmm - ponder ponder....

Rebooted again - not connected at first. This could have been a coincident but under Wireless Network Connection=>Change Advanced Settings=>Wireless Networks there's a field called 'key index' which defaults to 1. I flicked this to 2 then back to 1 again. Just as I did this the connection was made!

On rebooting again I'm connecting on startup every time. Passed the machine back to it's owner.

We're now surfing the web wirelessly from opposite ends of the couch, so we can swap insults by electronic media as well as verbally.