Clue please?

[ellarien]

I can't figure out how to get my netbook, running XP Home SP3, to connect to the WPA-encrypted ad-hoc network I set up on my Win7 machines.

Using the originated machine (the 64-bit one) to write network wizard file on a USB device isn't working. The wireless networking properties dialog doesn't acknowledge the existence of anything more complicated than WEP. Trying to download Windows updates that allegedly provide WPA functionality just get me messages that I don't need to install that update.

It doesn't matter all that much right now, but I shall be annoyed if I get my proper broadband modem in a couple of weeks and then find the netbook (which is actually the newest member of the herd, not much more than a year old) can't connect to it. I was rather counting on using that for surfing while the big laptop does DVD-player duty. (Though that may be all right, if the WPA key is provided; my problem may be that I'm using a passphrase on the Win7 machines and the XP wants the actual key, which I can't provide, though one would have hoped the USB solution would take care of that.

Sigh. Maybe the solution would be perfectly obvious if I wasn't (still) sick.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Is there a way of setting up the WPA-encrypted network that allows you to choose your own key?

I have no experience of doing what you're trying to do, but I did set up an ad-hoc network via a wireless dongle in the desktop machine (running Windows XP) to allow my iPod Touch to get online. There were options to choose your own key or have it generated automatically and I chose the manual option so I could enter it into the iPod. That was WEP though, not WPA.

[ellarien]

Aha! I tried setting up a new network and manually put in a WEP key. (I balked at generating and entering a 64-character WPA one.) After a bit of fiddling that may or may not have been necessary, everyone is currently acknowledging everyone else's existence.

In principle, I could use this to share the internet connection from the dongle, but there isn't so much bandwidth to spare that I want to do that -- it's mostly to share files so that I can print things I've downloaded on the laptop, or keep the photos synced.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

The only reason I struggled to set up the ad-hoc network in the first place was because it was the only way to get the Kindle books I'd bought from Amazon onto the iPod Touch. And it was a struggle, but I got there in the end!