Intel 2011, Intel gateway, WEP + XP

[Marvin]

I have the following hardware...

Intel Pro Wireless 2011 (WPC2011EU) (NOT 2011B)
Intel Wireless Gateway (WLGW2011BRW)

and my Laptop with Windows XP home (sp1)

The gateway has the latest firmware (2.40)
and the 2011 card has firmware 2.51-01 and 3.1.1.28 drivers.

My problem is trying to get WEP working on this setup, i configure a key via the gateways webinterface and apply it, the gateway resets and WEP is enabled.

In Windows XP i set the exact same key on the wireless network configuration, the red X disapears off the network connection but i cannot do anything on the network, i check status and it shows no IP address has been obtained from DHCP, so i try to do a renew but my DHCP server is unobtainable.

The entire setup works fine without WEP, but thats not much good to me.

I'ev searched intel's site for hours on end but have found little to help, from google's and Intel's site it does appear the 2011 supports WEP.

Any help appreciated.

Marvin

[oshea85]

Are you using the Intel card configuration utility, or WindowsXP's?

Many times, you want to disable WinXP's handling of your wireless connection, and let the manufacturer's utility do it instead.

Check your SSIDs (they are case sensitive), make sure you are entering WEP keys on both devices in the same format (ASCII vs. hexadecimal), and that both devices are using the same authentication algorithm (open vs. shared key).

If all this checks out, and your PC card thinks it's associated, what does the AP think? Check the association table, and system logs for messages.

If both the card and AP believe they are connected, then you most likely have an IP addressing problem. Try using static IP addresses to rule out something with DHCP.

[Marvin]

I've tried both methods, Intels ProSet II and XP neither seem to make a difference, SSID's are correct, and the Keys are in Hex both on the web based setup and when entered into ProSet II.

I dont see any options on the AP for an authentication method, perhaps you could explain shared authentication?

Unfortunately there is no logging on the AP except intrusion attempts which is emtpy.

One of the first things i tried was a static IP, which again gave me no results, and when no WEP is used DHCP hands out IP to the laptop fine.

Do you know if any Windows XP services need to be running for WEP to work, i recall pruning services a while back. the 802.11 autoconfig service is still fine and running tho.

Any help appreciated, this is a real tough one

[oshea85]

So, with static IPs on the AP and client device, it works until you turn on WEP?

Keep using static IPs, and try using 40-bit WEP instead of 128-bit. 40-bit WEP was specified in the 802.11b standard, and so should interoperate between vendors. 128-bit WEP was allowed in the standard, but its implementation was not described, so it may or may not work between vendors.

If that does not work, I would suspect bad hardware somewhere. Can you try a different card with your AP, or perhaps try connecting your card to someone else's AP?

[Marvin]

40 bit dosnt work either :(

I dont have another card nor access to another AP, but i'm borrowing another laptop tommorow with Win 98 on rather than XP, i'll see if it works with that.

[revcordell]

Marvin,

I have the same problem that you're experience (or were experiencing. I have a Dell C400 with a built in wireless card. I have to use the Windows XP configuration utility and it does not work at all. Whenever I turn wep off everything works fine. As soon as I enable wep I am not able to obtain a valid IP address.

If you've found a solution to this please let me know.

Rev.

[Marvin]

Hi revcordell, i have not found a solution at present, and Intel support have been uanble to help me, please post your progress here, i have not had much time to look at sorting my WEP recently but i plan to contact Intel support again soon.

[revcordell]

rumor has it that the problem may be with the service pack of Windows XP. I was on another message board and saw messages of describing the same problem as what you and I have. Each of the responses was to make sure that SP1 was installed for XP. We have not employed it yet here but when we do i'll definitely going to test the rumor.

[jammerdjc]

I've seen many many problems with wireless due to not being current with the XP service packs. Defacto now when looking at these issues I tell people to ensure that they are fully up to date on XP (ok, so as of November 2002) before I will start chasing the issues. Funny, but I often don't hear much after that. Then again, I've got a pretty solid certificate based environment I'm working in.

[Marvin]

unfortunately i am running WinXP home fully patched.

[ddodge1]

Welcome to the club with XP home. Microsoft did not intend the home edition to be networked for anything more than a few computers at home and is very restrictive by design. I had to move other machines to XP Prof. to get full networking to work. This may also be part of your problem.

See the book XP Annoyances, avaiable at Barnes & Noble.

[Arnie]

Hello,

Well, three years on from the original posting, it may not matter anymore, but just in case you happen to have the same problem... it took me three days to figure out why my old Intel 2011 wireless LAN PC card would not work with my IBM T23 laptop upgraded from Windows 2k to XP (with service-pack 1a).

I tried all of the above-mentioned items, but a good clue was that everything worked fine without WEP enabled. However, with Windows 2k everything worked with or without WEP.

I tried all of the latest drivers from both Microsoft (3.1.1.28) and intel (3.1.1.31), and both letting XP manage the connection or managing the 2011 through Intel Pro-Set-II (as on the v6.2 CD, but actually version 5.3.42.0).

My concusion is that the problem lies with Windows XP. However, nothing, except disabling WEP would give a connection. (Incidentally, I was using a Linksys WRT54G wireless router as the access-point.).

The solution:
Go back to the original Installation Disk of the Intel 2011 card and use the version 2.2.5.10 driver (or even any version 2.2 driver), NDIS5. This does not try to interact with any of the built-in 802.11b functions of XP and works very well with or without WEP enabled.

Unfortunately, it is not compatible with the nice Pro-Set-II managment tool, but all the features, except 801.x security are there.

As of this time, the 2.2 drivers are still available on the intel support site (look under the W2000 operating system list:

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/filter_results.aspx?strTypes=all&ProductID=450&OSFullName=Windows*+2000&lang=eng&strOSs=19&submit=Go%21

[Arnie]

Hello,

further to the above posting, I have now found that the cause of the problem with WEP not working properly with the Intel 2011 and the newer XP drivers is related to the text version of the WEP key.

The newer drivers for windows XP permit entering the WEP key as a text string and this apparently is not converted to the same Hexadecimal key as in the LinkSys router. Actually, I have found that this problem affects many different brands of wireless cards when used with WEP.

The solution is to enter the WEP key as a hexadecimal string and confirm that it is the same as in the Linksys configutation.

The wireless connection will then work, even with the latest Win XP drivers or letting Win XP manage the connection.

[M/Q]

Very good point. Too bad you did not come across that sooner on this forum. I have mentioned it on numerous occasions that you should not use the ASCII key entry only the HEX configuration when setting up the WEP key.