Acer Aspire 5600 cant connect to web

I'm trying desperately to get this thing to connect to the internet and nothing is working.
Acer eNet management doesnt seem to be workingl. When I hover the cursor over the eNet emblem it says "internet connected" however it isnt. When I open the eNet management program it clearly shows the WLAN is disconnected.

I am 4 feet from my FIOS router and the signal strength showing on the Acer is 100% of 54Mbps.

I have the wireless communication switch on, at least I think I do, I moved the slider to the right and it now appears yellow. Shouldnt it be green?

I have had this laptop in the closet for a long time because of this. Connecting to the internet is next to impossible. Once I finally worked through the problem with not connecting it would just decide to give me problems again for whatever reason. One day it's fine the next I cant connect.

My wife needs this to connect so she can work from home...help please!

 

Also the operating system is XP Media Center

 

Here's an idea - uninstall Acer eNet, and use Windows XP's internal configuration utility for getting your wireless working.
I've had nothing but trouble with Acer eAnything (except eRecovery, of course).

 

Did that and it hasnt seemed to make a difference. I went to network connections and it didnt have my wireless router listed. It did have 2 other unsecured networks but cannot connect.

 

Well, I know when my knowledge is tapped out. I'm moving this thread to the Networking and Wireless forum, where you'd have a better chance of being assisted.

 

What is the wireless card, what driver version do you use?
Does the device manager show the device as working properly or not?

 

I looked into Device manager and found the network adapter-Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG hopefully that makes sense to you. driver version 10.1.0.11

The device manager shows the device to be working. It is not. I go to Network Connections where my wireless FIOS registers as an active network and when I try to connect it does not. The progress bar just kinda spins and spins and eventually just go away with no message and with not having connected.

 

O.K. so I installed an updated utility and driver from intel and it "sees" my home "network" which consists of a FIOS router into my desktop.

I think the problem is with authentication, so I'm trying to get these two computers to talk with each other but man there are so many settings. Here are 3 pictures of the authentication process, anybody know what to input into the fields?

 

I can't verify this because I don't have Intel Wi-Fi card but why are you using enterprise security instead of personal security? Enterprise may require an additional server for authentication that I suspect you don't run.
Second thing- WEP is not really a security measure these days. It can be cracked in a minute and it limits the wireless bandwidth (wireless chipset are not optimized for WEP anymore)
Please test the following settings- WPA2 Personal and AES cipher.
While you're at ir why don't you update your drivers to the most recent- 13.3.0.137

 

I set up my FIOS router some 2 years ago with WPA security and for whatever reason it reverted to WEP. Obviously I'll have to change that.

So now I'm setting up WPA (Again) for my router. WPA2 is what is offered. I've selected 802.1x as an authentication method. And for an encryption algorithm TKIP+AES or AES?
The laptop's Intel connection software that I downloaded and am using to try to connect to the FIOS router does not offer TKIP+AES or AES but rather TKIP or AES-CCMP.
Man this is all giberish to me. I've looked at the tutorial on this site so I've made an effort to not waste anybody time here but this is way out of my league.

 

Use WPA2 and AES (not TKIP+AES) on the router and AES-CCMP in the Intel software thingy.
As for authentication- 802.1x may not work, EAP or open should though.
Anyway- set up WAP2+AES and then play with authentication.
At some point it becomes gibberish for everybody because the same thing can have few different names so I'm not sure either which authentication will work although I should probably kow that

 

As for authentication the router offers 802.1x and Pre-sahred key, thats it. If I select pre-shared key a text box opens, I suppose to enter a (random?) letter/number combination? Just after the text box a drop-down box also appears with either ASCII or Hex, does this mean anything to you?

Man this crazy complicated!

 

You should choose pre shared key (that's what PSK in WPA2 PSK stands for), choose ASCII and type your new password.
I'd recommend doing it in notepad and making it long, complicated and gibberish (don't use: & < § , \ though)- saving it for future reference and just copy-pasting to the router and notebooks used.

 

Thanks for all your help. I configured everything as you recommended. There is a list of available connections, and mine shows (which I just finished configuring) and when I click on connect the configuration utility comes up as though I havent already confugured it.

I'm done, dont need this aggravation. thanks though