wpa-psk vs dell 1397 wireless card

I've seen a number of mentions of this problem out there, but haven't seen a solution yet. I have a dell laptop (m6400) with the 1390 wireless card.

The problem is that it cannot talk to wireless routers set to wpa-psk (wpa-personal). The computer thinks there is a mismatch in authentication types.

This happens boht when I just let vista do the normal thing (I choose the router to connect to, it asks me for a password, then fails), or if I hand-configure a connection, tell it explicitly "WPA-Personal" and set encryption to "TKIP".

These exact settings work on a compaq running vista, but not on the M6400 running vista64. (By the way, "AES" encryption didn't work either).

If I do "diagnose", then look in the system logs, I see these messages:

"The wireless authentication settings on this computer do not match the requirements of this network."

"Status code 13: Responding station does not support the specified authentication algorithm (for e.g. Open vs Shared Auth)"

Other things:

+ if I set the router to WEP, I can connect fine

+ if I set the router to no encryption, I can connect fine

Neither of the above are acceptable solutions, and my router (along with other some people's routers) does not support wpa2.

Thanks for any ideas...

 

it might be helpful if you listed the router.

 

It's a netgear wgr614 v4. Updated to the latest firmware (which is a couple years old). Supports wpa but not wpa2.

From the anecdotes I've run across, it appears to me that the problem is with wpa-psk rather than any specific router, but I could be wrong.

 

An interesting data point would be if anyone has that wireless card and *does* have it working via wpa-psk.

 

More information is never bad. If you're asking for help, help the helpers by giving them everything you can.

Hopefully, I am not going over things you've already done (plus, if you have I've wasted a couple hours trying to help)

You're dealing with some slightly older hardware that was just coming on line as the standard changed...this is always likely to result in incompatibilities. Indeed, your router manual does not even LIST WPA as an option.

Obviously, the manual applies to an earlier version of the router, since the website expressly states it DOES support WPA.

Can I assume you have firmware version 4.04?

Let me tell you what I think may be going on, based on the outdated manual of your router and the specs of your card.

Pure speculation, but bare with me.

According to the 1390 card spec Your wireless card supports wpa with the encryption type of tkip/aes, but an authentication method of NONE (and encryption method of preshared key).

According to the outdated router spec Your wireless card does not supports wpa, but I think it is safe to assume that WPA was added to version 4. So, assuming that, let's say it supports a type WPA encryption with a type of tkip/aes, AND it supports an encryption method using a preshared key.

Here's the question though===what is the authentication method in use. Looking through your older manual, I see 3 settings: AUTOMATIC, OPEN and SHARED KEY.

Since your card requires NONE, set your router to OPEN, rather than AUTOMATIC or SHARED KEY (this is a separate setting form encryption type). I think your router may be set to AUTOMATIC, and is using something other than OPEN, which is causing your issue.

Again, this is pure speculation.

It may be that your early wpa router simply will not work with your early wpa wireless card.

 

Thanks for the thorough response. No, I haven't done a lot of that, until yesterday I was ignorant of most of it to tell you the truth and only vaguely aware of "wep is old", let alone two versions of wpa and so on.

I was unable to find some of the documentation you referred to.

To answer your questions:

+ router firmware is version V5.0_07 as reported by the admin interface

+ I'm still not sure what the difference between an encryption *type* is, vs an encryption *method*

+ you mention that the router should have choices automatic, open, and shared key for the authentication *method*. But what I see on the router admin interface is a setting for "Security Options" (choices are Disable, WEP, and WPA-PSK), and another setting for "Security Encryption" when I select WPA-PSK. That just allows me to set the passphrase and the key lifetime.

+ when you said to set it to "open", you didn't mean "Disable" above, did you? I did test that and I can in fact connect with the 1390 (as I can when set to WEP) but those options aren't secure enough for me.

Thanks for the input.

 

Oops. I had mis-remembered the card number when I walked between the non-working machine and here. It's a 1397 card, not a 1390. I'll change the title of this thread to accurately reflect that.

 

Hmm... can't see a way to change the title, so I'll start a new one instead.

 

Originally posted with wrong card number here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=366988

Windows Vista 64

Dell M6400, dell 1397 wireless card.

Router: Netgear wgr614 v4. Firmware version 5.0_07

Router does not have wpa2 available. Just wpa-psk, wep, and open.

Dell 1397 connection works fine when router is set to open or to wep.

Connection cannot be made when router is set to wpa-psk. If I do a "diagnose" and then look at the system log after a failed connection attempt, I see:

"The wireless authentication settings on this computer do not match the requirements of this network."

"Status code 13: Responding station does not support the specified authentication algorithm (for e.g. Open vs Shared Auth)"

The connection config on the dell looks identical to that on a Compaq I have that is successfully connecting. Namely, "wpa-personal" and "TKIP".

Thanks in advance for any clues.

 

my mistake on the firmware version number...

No, look on page 3-5 of your manual for the setting I am referring to...the problem is that the manual is out of date and they didn't post a newer one

 

I should add that the installed driver is the latest from Dell's site. Their page claims this info:

Release Date: 2/1/2009
Version: 4.170.77.3 (Driver); 4.170.77.18 (Application), A22-1

But the Device Manager info for this varies a bit, it claims the same version numbers, but release dates of 10/22/2008 (software) and 3/21/2008 (driver).

 

glittle,

Your threads have been merged. In the future if you made a mistake in the title(or wrong forum), use the report button( ) instead of making a new thread.

 

I've seen this same problem on a Precision M65 with a Dell Wireless 1490 Dual Band WLAN Mini-card and the exact same Netgear WRG614v4 router and V5.0_07 firmware.

The only solution I found was to go back to an earlier version of the WLAN driver for my particular card, for me I found that V4.100.15.5 worked just fine.

The "latest and greatest" driver version, WLAN 1490 USA 4.170.77.3 R189136.exe, definitely didn't work.

Whatever Dell did when they released that driver, they either (a) mucked up the support for WPA-PSK with TKIP, or else (b) they tightened up the driver to be "on specification" and the Netgear router is to blame for being too lax about the specification.

I had a live support chat with Dell about this, but they never seemed to have made a change to fix the problem on my Precision M65.

It looks like my Netgear router might now be forced into early retirement since my M6400 doesn't have the option of any older drivers than the 4.170.77.3 series, and I really don't want to rely solely on WEP.

Good luck !

J

 

Ah, this reminds me... should have posted back here a while ago. I ended up swapping the card for the intel 5100 and it worked like a charm.

-glenn