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hello,

I got an old Toshiba Satellite running Windows Me. It has a Belkin PC PCMCIA/PC card that has worked on my neighbors network with the same computer.

The router says that the laptop is registered with DHCP and the LED on the card also says that the connection is functioning, so does the software. however, I can't ping the router or go on the internet!

One thing that is odd though is that even though I provided the correct WPA-PSK TKIP password and the card supports it, the software says: "Key Absent".

Does anybody have an idea as to what the problem could be?
Appreciate the help,

kingair_six

Try just WPA security and see if the connection works

could be drivers or something... but Windows ME? Known as the worst OS M$ ever made..... possibly followed by Vista.

I totally agree and would switch to linux if I could, but i don't own the laptop, just use it.

in fact, i am posting from it right now, but only with WEP encrytion. doing more research i found out that WPA is only gonna work on ME with a special software that, unfortunately, is not available any more as it seems.

Are you certain that unit will run WPA. According to my book it will only do WEP reliably on WMe

" I found out that WPA is only gonna work on ME with a special software"...

Raybay, doesn't this mean that WEP is the only choice for kingair_six, for his Windows Me laptop?

I don't know. Have not been following the post. But we often see the case where WPA will not work because the device or the connection will not allow it, and Belkin has sold models that had that problem... the Belkins are not all made by the same contractor... we see models from one end of the country that are different from those on the other end.
The problem that was so similar to ones we have seen, that I thought I would mention, but my notes are in another City at the moment.
As I recall, the problem is with the device, not the OS, but of course anything could be the problem when Windows ME is involved.

I'm hoping to get this box on linux today and thus hopefully solving the driver issue, cause I am convinced that it is a problem related to Me, as mentioned above, with Me, everything is weird.

I am pretty sure we can rule out the possibility of the device being the problem since a USB WiFi stick also failed to connect to WiFi and produced the same symptoms: slow operation of windows no execution of programs. as soon as I switch of WPA all that disappears.

let's hope for linux to solve the problem (already has on a different machine of mine)