Problem Connecting to Home Network
 

Ok please help a newbie out here.

I set up a home network about a year ago with my broadband modem and a router, linked to my desktop. At the time it was the only computer in use and now I have brought my laptop back home from college. It won't connect to the network when I try. Any reasons why this might be happening? Thanks a bunch.

Re: Problem Connecting to Home Network
 

with so little info to go on here all I can do is give you my experience with this. My wife has a DoD laptop with massive amounts of security on it. When she comes home with it and we want to hook it up to the wireless network we have to shut down the desktop, and shut off the DSL modem and router. We wait a few minutes then turn on the modem and then router (in that order), wait a minute or two and start up her laptop. After a minute or two it connects.

Does your laptop find the network and not connect? We also have our router MAC enabled so that it will only recognize our desktop and her laptop. I'd start simple and dig deeper if needed. You may want to disable the security features on your router until you get your laptop connected, then add them back in one by one.

Re: Problem Connecting to Home Network
 

google your problem, and you'll find guides to setting it up.

it's not quite as seamless/easy as you might think (and as it should be).

I had to shut down all firewalls, put the computers in the same workgroup, then I was able to get them seeing each other

Re: Problem Connecting to Home Network
 

First of all, I assume you're talking about a wireless network, right?

I agree with the previous post about starting from the simplest possible configuration and adding in features one by one. This is the easiest way to isolate the problem. Also, here are a few links to sites/forums with good info on wireless networking issues, etc:

<ul type="square">Notebook Review networking &amp; wireless forum
Practically Networked wireless troubleshooting page[/list]