Need computer help ASAP

[disneysteve]

I'm hoping someone can walk me through fixing something. We are on vacation and I've been using my laptop on the wireless network in the home we are renting. Yesterday, I ran virus, adware and spyware scans, as I do regularly. Since then, I've been unable to get online. Fortunately, my daughter has her netbook and that is working just fine.

My Wireless Network Connection is Disabled. When I click to Enable it, the connection attempt fails. I don't know what to do to fix it. I seem to recall there is a way to get a "Repair connection" prompt, but I don't know how to get to that point.

We've got another 9 nine days here. I don't want to be offline all that time, so please help.

I'm using Windows XP by the way.

[Broken Arrow]

Several possibilities. But it does help that your daughter's netbook works, and that your laptop worked before.

So that narrows the field down to possibly something you did recently that may have changed the settings on the laptop. Was there any new software installed? Retracing your steps from the last time that the network was working, what is different?

Also, it would help to have the following details.

1. What kind of wireless hardware is it?

Start menu > Setting > Network Connections > Wireless Network > right-click icon > properties

2. What kind of network is your daughter's netbook picking up? Is it your own router or a public one provided by a hotel, or the neighbor?

3. Do you remember what your signal strength was when it was working? What about your daughter's netbook? Also, have you tried to use it in the same location, or were you in a different location when it stopped working?

[Lonewolf]

Wireless

Steve,

I think if you hit Control Panel, Network Connections you should see your wireless network conneciton (might be X'ed out). If you right click on it you should have the option to Repair. Hope that helps.

[disneysteve]

Somehow, this problem corrected itself. Even though it wasn't working last night or this morning when I booted up, I shut down the computer and then restarted it and it is now working fine. Perhaps something I tried to reset earlier required a restart to activate, though I didn't get any prompts telling me that.

Thanks for the input. I'm back online!

[Broken Arrow]

Good to hear it!

[I.T.Guy]

I'm not saying this is the case, but another possibility could have been that whoever set up the wireless router as limited the number of IP addresses it will give out when someone connects to the network. If you and your daughter have been connected at the same time, then that's certainly not the case. But if you've been connected seperately, it's possible that only 1 IP address is allowed.

I would highly doubt that is the situation, but theoretically, it could happen.

Good to hear everything is back to normal. Now get off that computer and go enjoy your vacation!!

[Broken Arrow]

it's possible that only 1 IP address is allowed.

Yeah, that or MAC filtering. Both seem rather far-fetched to me though, because neither a public nor unprotected router is likely to have been tweaked in that way. If Steve is the router owner, he did not indicate in any way that he would have done such a thing. Even something as crazy as a honeypot would not make such a glaring mistake like this.

Either way, that's what question #2 was for.

[disneysteve]

Today's a lounge around day - did some shopping, went out to lunch, now relaxing.

We have both been online at the same time, so that wasn't the problem. Something got reset when I updated and ran some scans.