Having trouble setting up router

[Muzaffar]

About a few days ago, my brother-in-law bought a new router to use for our house. Its a D-Link DIR300. So he tried to configure the router for the PC and it was just fine. But the problem is, he tried to connect to the router through my fathers laptop (a Dell Inspiron 510M) and somehow had a few problems and could never connect to the router. It could connect to the router if the router was unsecured, but had problems when it is secured. Also, it sometimes disconnects from the router every few minutes. Tried just about everything and just feel like kinda giving up....

I also had run Comodo Firewall Pro on my PC, so does it interfere with the router connection and if so, how do I configure it to accept the router? If things couldn't get worse, just now I couldn't even connect to the internet with the router! (had to plug off the router and use my modem again......) Another question is, how do you even switch off the router and how to reset all the configurations to default? This is giving me and my brother-in-law a big headache.......

 

[TB]

After switching to the Australian site, I found the 300, as we don't have one listed in the US. I think your first step in troubleshooting is to turn off the tomizone hot spot. It can be hard enough to get a wireless network set up with only one SSID, let alone two. Then once your private network is set up and working, turn tomizone back on if need be.

Was the computer that worked with the router hard wired or wireless?

As far as reseting the router, there should be a small "button", typically on the back, that you'll need a pin or pen to push. Hold it down for a few seconds (I'd imagine all the lights will go off on the router) and it should be set back to factory settings.

This won't fix your problem, but it's a start.

 

[Muzaffar]

1. Sorry to sound stupid but, what is the tomizone hot spot? Well I have to ask my brother-in-law to try again and configure the whole router again.....

2. The laptop is wireless. (forgot what network adapter was. The laptop is not with me now) But I don't really know what signal does the laptop support.....

3. Tried that the whole day, but still, the laptop won't connect to the router! I was really hoping the default setup would make it work, I guess not......

 

[TB]

The router supports two wireless networks - one private with security so not just anyone can access it and the other, the tomizone, is public so if, for some odd reason, you want to share your internet access with everyone you can do so with no passwords, no encryption, nothing.

I can get you through the basics, but I've never used a D-Link so to a point I'm flying blind. If you have a passcode set up and MAC filtering turned on, you'll need to get the passcode from the router and the MAC address from the computer. You can get the MAC address by going to Start --> Run --> cmd.exe. Once the cmd window opens, type "ipconfig/all" with no quotes. Your looking for the Wireless Adapter Physical Address. It will be something along the likes of A1-B2-C3-D4-E5-F6. Write that down.

Now on to the passcode. On my Linksys, it's at 192.168.1.1 (but yours might be different - maybe 192.168.0.1) then under Wireless --> Wireless Security. Look at what your default WEP Key is and write down what that number/letter string. Then, under Wireless --> Wireless Network Access add in the MAC address of the computer and save.

This is where it starts to get fuzzy as I have mine set up to auto connect, so I've only done this once and it was a while ago. Search for wireless networks and connect to yours, as you may have multiple networks in the area. A security box should come up asking for the passcode. Enter in the code you wrote down earlier and it *fingers crossed* should work.