Two things
posted by DL Byron on January 12, 2004
I’d been trying to add a WinXP pc to my Airport network for two days. Trying various things, rebooting this, installing that, tech support calls, and finally after nearly giving up, I found these two threads
Make sure that Wireless Zero Config is installed and running
Make sure that Shared Authentication is on.
and this site
Once I did those two things, I was on at 54mbps with a linksys WPC54G. Later in a conversation with my daughter, I said, "Check this out. I can work on the computer in bed." And she said, "can you get pollypocket.com on that?" "Yes." "Cool."
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Comments
Jan 12 | Glenn Fleishman said:
I wrote a whole sidebar in The Wireless Networking Starter Kit about the Windows XP Wireless Zero Configuration problem.
It’s called ZERO CONFIGURATION. Why do I have to configure it?
Anyway, it’s apparently a typical problem. Now, whenever i have a problem on my XP boxes or a friend calls with an XP problem, it’s right-click My Computer, Manage, Services, Wireless Zero Configuration, Start (or Stop then Start), and we’re up.
Jan 12 | -b- said:
Agreed. Windows did not tell my that Wireless Zero Configuration wasn’t running. All I saw was a grayed-out advanted tab. Another friend who works at a wi-fi company spent a week tyring to figure that out.
Jan 12 | Doug Manis said:
I’m the friend who spent a week trying to figure it out.
We found that it was the machines that had been upgraded from Win2000 to WinXP that the Wireless Zero Configuration service wasn’t started for. The service is set to ‘Automatic’ in clean XP installs, but ‘Manual’ for upgrades. No reason why, but it was consistent for all the upgraded machines.
Naturally, that service was the last thing we thought to look at. We reinstalled drivers, swapped cards, etc. for several days before a field engineer thought to check the service.
I guess the lesson is when you’re doing your semi-annual Windows rebuild, do a clean install.
Jan 12 | -b- said:
And, I’ll give props to WinXp for the wireless zero-config. Had it been running, the pc would have been in my “five minutes to wi-fi” experience.