Wireless laptop CAN'T access internet but CAN connect router

[Hatz]

Ok I hope this isn't against forum rules or anything.....hehe might have just answered my own question but I saw something similar in another thread a long time ago.



Anyways, my buddy back home has a laptop......wireless built in and what not. Well one night he was sitting in his room playing hearts or somethng and he connected to a wireless router signal. Well this went on for awhile and he could get a signal....not very fast...he said it was compareable to dialup. Well, he was getting it for free so he wasn't bitching.


Anyways, just a few days ago he couldn't access the internet anymore. In the bottom right corner of the desktop the icon shows him connected to the linksys router, and has a signal strength of 8mbps or something....so not very fast. It says the signal strength is low. But it had always said that.

Well, when he tries to get on IE, it just says detecting proxy settings and then comes up with page could not be displayed. I told him to release and renew ipconfig.........when he releases it, it comes up with real numbers and not exactly 000.000.000.000....which is what i usually get. He can't renew either. It comes up with an error of: an error occured while renaming interface wireless connection......unable to contact DHCP server.

What do you people think is going on here? It's weird that he can connect awhile ago but not anymore......and also that he can connect to the router but not to the internet. I told him to try to access the router via 192.168.X.X. but that came up with page could not be displayed. I guess that isn't the right router number for his neighbors router.....although i thought thats what it was for all linksys routers.

I just don't know what is going on.....any help would be appreciated and if its against rules, I understand. Thanks.

Hatz

[redwudz]

Maybe the neighbor got smart and changed his router setup to block anything but his own computers? Easy enough to set the router to fixed addresses. Of course the neighbor could have also logged onto your friends computer and changed his settings. It goes both ways.

[maansingh169]

i think the neighbor got smart and just encrypted the wireless connection....

[Capmaster]

There's several ways he got smart - Started using MAC address filtering (ignores a wireless adapter unless its MAC address is on the list), started using encryption, or used a threshold filter (weak signals ignored - foils war drivers)