AT&T gave us a new router today, and our Vista machine can no longer connect wirelessly. Hard line works fine. The computer sees the router and has excellent quality connection but says "Local Access Only" and I can't get to any web sites. I tried downloading some Microsoft fix that didn't work and dicked around with the registry but couldn't find what they told me to edit. I found countless similar problems on google mostly from 2007 and couldn't figure it out.

Anybody deal with this before?

It means that the router itself isn't connecting to the internet, but your computer can connect to it (The Router).

It means your router isn't giving DHCP leases.

So how do I fix it? Every non vista machine in the house hooked right up.

Are they connected wirelessly?

I've had this problem with two different routers. The most recent one is a 2Wire from AT&T (I did go ahead with the Uverse install for those that remember). I just (as in three minutes ago) fixed my connection problem on my Vista laptop the exact same way I did before. On the router I changed the wireless security to WEP and set a static channel rather than leave it on auto and, of course, mirrored the settings on the laptop. Works fine now. You can try that or pull some more of your hair out trying to figure out why it won't connect despite having all the appropriate settings on the Vista computer.

WEP's a great way to meet FBI agents.

I would prefer to use another level of encryption but it's what works for whatever reason.

Could you elaborate a bit more on this? I'm not real savvy with network stuff.

I will say that there are about 15-20 different devices that access our home network on a weekly basis between all our laptops, desktops, smartphones, PS3, visitors laptops and smartphones, etc. Would changing this cause problems for everybody?

The owner of the Vista machine, my dad, is contemplating switching it over to 7.

Yes, changing this will cause problems for everybody - you will likely need to reconfigure all devices. WEP is also highly insecure, which means anybody will be able to connect to your network or snoop on all traffic (which means they can hijack your account on any sites not using HTTPS.)

The laptop probably has DHCP disabled (using a 'static IP address,') or some other bad configuration option. Try disconnecting, deleting the saved settings, and reconnecting.

What Jon`C said. I was never able to find anyway to connect the Vista machine wirelessly than how I described. What I described was accessing the router setup and changing the encryption from what it is to WEP. I then changed the setting that allows it to automatically change channels (frequencies) and chose a fixed channel. Every other device that connects to your network would have to adjust those settings. Not hard to do, just a pain.

This same Vista laptop refused to connect to a wired network I used once as well while an XP laptop had no issues. That was frustrating.

I made mine work by manually configuring the connection.

I think there is an option in the stored wireless network list.

Theres also a real strong chance you are sausage fingering your keyboard.

I doubt that. There has to be some retardly simple option (or options) buried somewhere. I have had the exact same problem on two different routers as well as an inexplicable inability to connect to a wired network with Vista. Or we both just have some bad hardware/software compatibility issues unique to our setups. That's a strong possibility as well.

Try downloading the latest drivers for your network card. I had that problem with windows 7 and it turned out that the network card drivers intel shipped on the cd didn't work right.

Is the vista machine the only computer having issues connecting wireless? Cell phones and laptops have no issue?

Ok, so not really an option then.



Done multiple times...nada.



No issues for anything else, wired or wireless. Only the vista machine does this, and only for wireless.

When connected on the vista box what is your IP address

Go to command prompt and run "ipconfig /all". Let us know the results.

It's probably a config issue. For example, if your default gateway or netmask are incorrectly setup you'd be sending traffic for the internet to something other than your router and it wouldn't get anywhere.