Laptop and wireless printer problem

Hope somebody can help. I have a home wireless network hard-wired through a
Belkin ADSL router to the home pc. On the net is also my Compaq nx9030 laptop
(with centrino) and a HP psc2510 all in one printer configured for wireless.
All was fine until a few days ago when a check on the HP website showed that
a printer driver update was available. When I tried to download onto my
laptop it failed to complete. I also lost my wireless connection and I had to
reinstall the software for the printer. It loads ok in usb mode but goes into
some sort of repetetive loop when I try to configure the laptop for wireless
as per the printer's manual and will not allow me to complete the software
load. PC is XP Home and laptop is XP Pro (both SP1). The Belkin guy tried
some things over the phone and it appears that my pc will ping everything on
the network but my laptop times out when tryng to ping the pc. He says that
there is a problem with the laptop's wireless card as the laptop seemsl no
longer to support encryption with 128-bit security but (can still access the
web without security). I turned of the laptop's firewall through all of this.
The laptop is fairly new and there are no system-restore points. What can I
do to get my laptop to ping the pc and be able to print remotely?
--
johnny-g

Johnny I couldn't wait to hit the reply button and tell you to just go back
to an earlier restore point...then I read your last sentence. First of all,
turn on System Restore. It will get you out of a lot of jams like this one.

Secondly, as an IT Consultant who spends way too much time talking to tech
support, I can tell you that when they blame it on the hardware they're
ususally saying, "I can't solve this and need to get off the phone and talk
to the next guy". I seriously doubt there is a hardware reason you can't
connect with encryption.

But the better question is, why are you encrpting? It's always a pain, it's
erratic, and I have yet to hear of one case where someone sits outside a
house and steals your information. I just hide the SSID. That way, everyone
can see my wireless, but they can't hook on to it unless they guess that it's
my son's middle name.

Encryption is never as easy or reliable as the manuals tell you. If your
hardware works without it, just go into your wireless router and hide the
SSID.

"johnny-g" wrote:

> Hope somebody can help. I have a home wireless network hard-wired through a
> Belkin ADSL router to the home pc. On the net is also my Compaq nx9030 laptop
> (with centrino) and a HP psc2510 all in one printer configured for wireless.
> All was fine until a few days ago when a check on the HP website showed that
> a printer driver update was available. When I tried to download onto my
> laptop it failed to complete. I also lost my wireless connection and I had to
> reinstall the software for the printer. It loads ok in usb mode but goes into
> some sort of repetetive loop when I try to configure the laptop for wireless
> as per the printer's manual and will not allow me to complete the software
> load. PC is XP Home and laptop is XP Pro (both SP1). The Belkin guy tried
> some things over the phone and it appears that my pc will ping everything on
> the network but my laptop times out when tryng to ping the pc. He says that
> there is a problem with the laptop's wireless card as the laptop seemsl no
> longer to support encryption with 128-bit security but (can still access the
> web without security). I turned of the laptop's firewall through all of this.
> The laptop is fairly new and there are no system-restore points. What can I
> do to get my laptop to ping the pc and be able to print remotely?
> --
> johnny-g