Setting up Vista WiFi over IM: yak shaving
My girlfriend got a new Vista PC, pretty good one from SONY and was trying to setup WiFi with her router, got no luck and I’ve been trying to guide her to set it up over the instant messenger. It’s nothing but a yak shaving.
- The PC doesn’t have WiFi client, so we bought a pretty cheap $10 USB wifi adapter from PCI. The CD ROM comes with Vista driver but the setup instruction was old and incorrect. We figured out how to install it manually by looking at their FAQ site. Done.- Tried to connect to the existent wifi router but she couldn’t find how to. Yeah, it’s Windows, so it needed a reboot to enable the Wi-Fi client capability.- Now she’s asked for a WEP password which she doesn’t remember. Let the fun begin.- Tried to connect another router with 802.11g to set up. She only has one ethernet cable, so I told her to turn it on but not connect the cable yet.- The PC is now on wireless with the default SSID and no password. The router’s admin screen is 192.168.0.1, she opened it and tried the default password but it wasn’t accepted.- We thought it’s an IE stupid security thing and tried Firefox, no luck.- We tried resetting the router a couple of times, and tried other possible default passwords. Still no luck.- It turned out 192.168.0.1 is the IP of ADSL modem. Gosh.- I told her to unplug the ethernet and try the same IP. Now we can get the login screen but as soon as she typed the password the wireless goes down.- We now tried the ethernet option. Plug the PC LAN and router LAN port and access 192.168.0.1 on the browser. No response.- By the command prompt and fabulous ipconfig command we figured out its network has changed to 192.168.1.. Now she opened the 192.168.1.1 and successfully changed its internal IP range to 192.168.254.- Changed the security setting which is SSID:default and no password to a bit more secure WPA(PSK)/TKIP. Was (surprisingly) successful.- Now unplug the ethernet cable from the PC and connected to router WAN. - woohoo! now she’s online via WiFi.It took like 3 hours to setup all of this, and that’s why suggesting a new computer is the best way for geeks to get close to the girls “Hi, could you set this up for me?” “Sure thing, may I come to your place tonight?”