asked on

WLAN Problem

I have an Acer Aspire 5000 XP Home SP3 laptop before me with all MS updates installed and all manufacturer updates installed, including BIOS and all available driver updates.

The laptop has a Broadcom 802.11g Network Adapter wireless card installed. It can connect to a unsecured wireless network with no problem. In fact I removed the security from my WLAN and have been surfing with it for the past two days. The problem is that with any sort of security on the WLAN, even WEP 64 bit, it will not connect. It see the network, attempts to connect,and then reports "The wireless network is no longer available."

I have manually setup the WLAN connection under "advanced Settings" but this didn't help.It has shown the same behavior on another WLAN. I checked for the latest driver from Broadcom but could find no downloads for it there. From Acer a driver was available but it was the version already installed. I re-installed it anyway to no effect.

Any suggestions appreciated.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

lancecurwensville

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

westone

ASKER

Other wireless devices can connect. I am posting this from another laptop on the same WLAN. as I said in the OP, this laptop has exhibited the same behavior on another WLAN, and that WLAN too had other devices connected. The problem is definitely confined to the Acer Aspire laptop.

lancecurwensville

When you state manufacturer drivers, do you mean the drivers from Acer or from Broadcom for your wireless device? Trying the simplest solution, download them from whichever you didn't use, uninstall existing driver, reboot, install the new driver.

I've seen this before, and typically, it is a driver issue.

westone

ASKER

originally i downloaded from acer for this specific laptop. since, I have found and tried the Broadcom supplied driver to no effect.

westone

ASKER

I physically removed the WNIC card from the laptop, then removed all references to it from the registry, all driver files for it from \System32 & \system32\Drivers, then reinstalled with the Broadcom supplied driver. Same result. Maybe the card is bad, but it looks like either an XP networking issue, driver issue or something software oriented,otherwise it doesn't seem like it would okay with no wireless security.

westone

ASKER

Okay, I installed a USB WNIC and it does exactly the same thing. Must be a Windows XP OS issue. Geez, I was hoping for a solid solution from EE, i appreciate the help though.

westone

ASKER

I found the solution: Disable / uncheck the option IEEE 802.1x authentication for this network.
Never run across this before, but it resolved the error instantly.

westone

ASKER

Thanks for the effort, this was an arcane issue.