New T60 and new to wireless...please help

Here is what is going on:

I purchased a WRT54GS last year to hook up my desktop. The desktop didn't have ethernet (yes, it was that old) and so I put away the router.

I just bought a new T60 and it has a wireless card.

I got out the router and tried to connect. It won't connect and I think it was because I have VISTA home premium on the T60 and the router is not compatible with VISTA.

So, we another desktop for my young DS to play games. It is XP so I figure that will work. It doesn't. I go thru the setup many times and download the LELA from Linksys site.

Somebody at DH's work suggests that I need a Wireless Access Point because the laptop probably came with a router. I don't believe it did....just the network card to get on a wireless network. I don't even know what a wireless access point is.

So, what do I do now? The only think I know to do is wait until Linksys has VISTA drivers to make this thing work.

 

All setup must be done through a wire connection. It is not OS Dependent. For right now turn off the firewall. Point your browser to 192.168.1.1 then run the setup wizard. After it is working wired then continue on with the wireless setup, WPA or WPA2

 

Thank you for your reply.

I want to clarify.

On the laptop, I should disable the firewall.

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by pointing my browser to 192.168.1.1. Does that mean to type that in the address line? Once I do that and start the setup, I won't be connected to the internet until I go thru the setup and it works.

 

FW cause 90% of connection problems. So temp disable for testing.

In the address bar type "http://192.168.1.1" (with out quotes).
This should bring up the router admin page.
then enter the def user and pw to access the setup, if a setup wizard does not run.

You can download the PDF manual from Linksys if you need it.

For wireless you need to run a min of WPA or WPA2 wireless security. I have found when you enter keys by copying and pasting you have a higher percentage of it working the 1st time. (copy to a notepad)

 

Thank you for your help.

I tried and tried and couldn't get this working. I finally called Linksys and they got it solved. The main problem was that the router and laptop had the same IP address. She walked me through changing that and was very helpful.

She also walked me thru making it secure. She picked WEP and I set up a password. Is this good enough? Should I do anything else to secure this?

 

WEP is not secure in any way. Takes less than 60 sec to get in.

You need to change it over to WPA.

 

Why in the world would she have me do that then? I'm glad that I asked here.

So, I go into the 192.168.1.1 page and change the security setup to WPA.

Anything else I should know to do this or anything else I should do?

Thanks for all the help!

 

You will need to enter a new security key/phrase.

Change your setting in the router to G only and you will get better performance. too.

WEP requires very little processor power as compaired to WPA. WEP was introduced in 11b, since the early hardware had very low powered cpu, they did not want to load the cpu. As it was any way users still took a 25+% hit in performance. This is not the case any more. You should only take ~5% hit with the better WPA security.