Need assistance with hooking up a wireless router to destop & laptop

[Regan99]

I don't know what I'm doing and need some assistance with setting up a desktop & laptop with wireless router and was wondering if someone could help me. I have a HP Pavilion a462x with an ethernet card and just purchased a Dell Laptop with wireless capability. I have a DSL line on my computer and am getting ready to buy a Linksys Router. Is there anything special I need to buy for my desktop, any adapters? Will everything I need come with the Linksys for both my laptop and desktop? :bounce: I also want to add some more memory to my desktop and don't know how to do that but my main concern is getting my desktop & laptop both on the high speed DSL. Can someone help me?

 

[StormBringer]

Most important here is the wireless card in the laptop and the model of Linksys router. Pretty much, you'll need to ensure the Linksys router has the latest version of its firmware to ensure it works with either the Dell or Intel card in your laptop, there could be additional settings that need to be tweaked, depending on the card and router. As for general setup, the DSL line will connect to the WAN port on the router, the desktop will connect to a LAN port, you will then open a web browser on the desktop and go to http://192.168.1.1(for linksys) username is left blank, password is admin. Once in there, in setup, set it to DSL if you have pppoe settings and enter that info(dsl username and pw) If it is static, set it that way, if you have one of the dhcp enabled dsl modems, set it up as dhcp(this part is going to fully rely on the way your modem is set up and will only work one way, if you try it and it doesn't work, powercycle and try the other)
Next, click on wireless, change the SSID to something unique to you, change the channel to 1, 6 or 11(its prolly set to auto) I recommend 11. At this time we also want ssid broadcast enabled.(you can turn that off after you ensure it works if you wish)
Also DO NOT enable security at this time, again, make sure you get it working first, then secure it. If you secure it now, and can't connect, you'd have to disable the security to rule that out as a cause of failure.
After getting it set up initially, you can go back and set up security. You can also come back and set up static IPs and turn off broadcasting and dhcp server if you like. For now, lets just get it working, then you can reply here and we'll help you with more advanced config and security of the network.

PS: DO NOT USE THE SETUP CD THAT COMES WITH THE ROUTER. Those cds rarely work and usually do not properly detect the connection type. I know there is a label over the LAN ports telling you the opposite, but I've been setting up routers for a very long time, I've only gotten those CDs to work maybe one out of fifty times, they usually fail to detect a connection.