wireless network question - old laptop not working with 'new wireless'

[Jon Frost]

Hi,
I was quickly asked the other night to try and get a mates laptop onto his SKY wireless BB. It looked like he was using a netgear router, provided and rebadged up as SKY, from SKY.

It had a 6 or 8 diget and letter code on the base of the router.

so, switched hte laptop on, saw the wireless connection through the ms wireless viewer, selected to connect to it, entered the code and it said 'this code is too short, and should be 8-16 charectors.'

He had to kick me out his house before I could get my teeth into the problem, but any ideas please.

the laptop was 4 years old is. it could see the BB, so why shoudlnt it connect :S.

No passwords to reconfigure the router either, as it was SKY

Thanks,

J

 

[Bobster]

Yup, basically the laptops OS/wireless adaptor are not set up for the new style of wireless encryption.

The router will be WPA PSK and the laptop is too old to understand this 'new' type of encryption.

The laptop will only be able to do WEP encryption (old and easily crackable)

Solution.
Do all the windows updates you can and look for the latest driver for the wireless adaptor.

 

[SentineL-X]

Why can't you change the sky router to use WEP rather than WPA?

Don't know what you mean about "no passwords to reconfigure sky" either.. the default username and password is

username: admin
password: sky

If XP is installed on the laptop, ensure SP2 is installed...