Been feeling a bit stupid for the last day or so .... system dropped off, unbelievably hosed. Belkin wireless card installed to the desktop .. 'working just fine' when it was unplugged. (previous conversation last week with the owner is that the wireless router there is wide open and all that 'tech talk' is simply over her head as far as securing it) .... However, editing the security bits on this systen and my wireless router/access point basically left me with the distinct impression that the car was btoken .. it'd pass all the diagnostics provided by Belkin, but ... wouldn't change the "no signal seen" status.

Gave up trying to save what was there, re-installed Win-98SE to a new directory. New download amd install of current drivers for the wireless card ... no change. So shoved in a wired card, set it up, marched from there. Used computer wthout the original package of CDs, so calledd over and asked what the prime mission was, so as to take a stab at throwinf on the (free) alternative stuff. Conversation then went to the recently restored XP machine, so started some dialog on trying to figure out how it had gotten jacked up already (ZoneAlarm, AVG, Ad-Aware, SpyBot, Microsoft's Defneder/Malware remover, etc ... and in a week it's 'back to running slow' .... (background story, it's the daughter's computer that this post started about, so while it's here being repaired, daughter has been using Mom's computer ... geeze ....) Anyway, the issue here is that during this phone conversation, the damned Belkin card all of a sudden started showing signs of life ... i.e., the big red dot started flickering with a bit of yellow ... tooltip complained of 'low signal' ...

Now this is after three days of powered-up operation .... the comparison data being having a laptop with a Belkin wireless card installed showing me three wireless networks in the area, but this desktop sitting in the same room saying "no signal seen" .... strangest part of the current 'working' mode .... it sees two other wireless networks available, one WEP, one non-encrypted (both named Linksys <g> ..... different power levels, so not sure if these are in different homes or if it's just seeing both the router and the associated computer??) ... the issue is that there is no evidence of 'my' network .. again, the various laptops here in the same room have no issue, Mom's laptop (also a Belkin PCMCIA card) a few hundred feet down the street have no problem with seeing all three networks. The desktop in question simply won't 'see' my router/access point sitting maybe three feet away ...????

OK doing other thngs, installing more software, updates, etc. via the wired network card ... caught up with that, so started trying to work with the wireless connection. Here we go ...???

Nothing too extraordinary there at first glance. However, ...... systems powered up at present ....

Note the 192.168.1.104 tied to Ashley's box .... the wired card
Note that the 192.168.1.103 address is actually assigned to another wired system.

The wireless card in Ashley's box is supposed to connect to my wireless router, nicely fitting into the scheme of things at 192.168.1.203 ..... However, near as I can figure, it is grabbing its DHCP data from one of the other wireless network routers .... thus leaving my network with two systems setting at 192.168.1.103. Noting that the gateway IP addresses are the same, so will assume that it would end up using 'mine' .. but this is also a question, I suppose.

MAC address of the card in question plugged into the 'allowed' table on my router .... password (keys) all in place. I 'forced' the IP address of 192.168.1.203 into the Win-98 configuration .. did the re-boot .. no change .. scan still showed the other networks, no evidence that mine existed.

Reassigned it to an address out of the DHCP range of my router, added this address to the firewall rules to let if through .. re-booted ... no change ... scan shows everybody but my network ....

I have found myself going in circles at this point. DHCP and even connecting to my network is a ways off, seeing as how it's not even showing up in the 'scan' screen .... ?????

Sympathy Wazoo - you're probably not quite ready for my technique of percussive maintenance. But then ... you will have looked in the user support forums like Expansys Belkin Support & Discussion Forums. I notice four queries there out of six (specific to connection problems with the Belkin 802.11g Wireless PCI Adaptor) with 6,325 views and not a single response. A 20 ounce ball pein would be calling me.

As to the answers that were given - PCI version 2.1 and up required (but symptoms are different in description given) - similar symptoms to yours,suggestion that NetStumbler might help (danged if I can see why).

Oh yeah, back in the day ..... I had suggested to her in that last phone call that I hadn't been kicked around like this in a long time. I had stated that about the only thing I hadn't tried yet was the ultimate solution to a problem like this, the (infamous) bench-to-ground test .. and that was primarily due to the fact that I didn't have a bench tall enough handy <g>

And quite in contrast to those that give me hell for posting so often here .... seeing questins asked back 2004 with no reply at all .... geeze ... how can they use the words "active forum" ????

Heh! I don't have a wireless system capable of running NetStumber (all still on Win-98) But the use of NetStumbler includes the (attempted) cracking of passwords and keys, in addition to learning the basic characteristics of the signals seen .... strength, signal-to-noise, bandwidth, channel assignements, etc. (Kismet on the Mac does most of this stuff) I did try a half-dozen Linux distros, but again ... this is an older 500MHz PIII, so most recent live-CD versions wouldn't do a straight boot (funniest error message - BIOS fails the age date test - Ubuntu 7.0.4.A.4 Herd 4), none were willing to really work with the Belkin card if they recognized it at all .... (noting that I am not falling into calling the 500MHz PIII "old" .... considering that the 'Antique' machine in the list above is a 133MHz Pentium machine I use to run a dial-up server on so I can troubleshoot that part of someone's "can't connect" issue .... )

Think I'm at the point on this one where I'm going to pull the wired card out, maybe play with it a bit more ... the 'smart' thing I suppose would be to drop all the security on my wireless router and see if it connects then ... but that just seems wrong ....

The flip side is that the wired card came out the computer that once was the Mom's computer (failure of which caused her to buy the [XP] one I recently 'restored') .. tergetted now to be "the Dad's" computer .. This one is a Win-ME based system ... while one of her boys was trying to 'fix' it, the Win-ME CD exploded inside the drive .... I have the feeling at this point that this next computer is going to be the one that's going to have them learn to like Linux (or else) ... I sure don't have any ME stuff floating around here ...

Yes it does, but "needs must". Why couldn't it be something simple like not seeing local wireless networks at all? Daze N. Knights over in the GRC forums had such a puzzle, turns out some bits were flipped in Wireless Zero Configuration (disabled) and Network Connections (manual) - seen through pulling up local services via Run > services.msc. Easy! - 'cept of course it took him days to find (with assistance) whereafter he promptly forgot how he fixed it, but fairly quickly recapitulated with more help. Anyhow, recorded here in the event it might solve some future conundrum.

[services.msc applies to Win 2000, Win Server 2000, Win XP, Win Server 2003, Vista]