Suggestions to trouble-shoot mobile broadband?

A friend of mine who lives out in the boonies has just signed up for
Sprint's mobile broadband (EVDO) service, and it's working quite
well for him.

But he also got a Linksys WRT54G3G-ST router, which seems to me to
be a very slick deal. You take the Sprint laptop card out of the
laptop, and plug it into the compatible port on the router, and
that's your WAN connection. But the router also includes a standard
wireless router for the LAN side.

My friend can connnect to the Linksys by ethernet cable with no
problem. In addition, his son-in-law's Blackberry will connect
wirelessly to the Linksys. But my friend's second desktop computer,
with a Belkin PCI client card, will not connect wirelessly. The
card finds the Linksys router, but when he clicks on Connect, it is
unable to do so, and says something like "Windows is unable to
connect - use other software if available."

Now the Belkin card DID connect to his old Belkin wireless router
when last checked. So we're trying to figure out which setting is
screwed up.

For the moment, all encryption has been turned off. I've been
through every setting I can think of with him over the phone, and
everything seems ok.

One thing that I've thought of since talking to him last is that he
has his Workgroup name set the same as the router SSID. Could that
be confusing Windows?

Otherwise, I would appreciate any suggestions anyone might have.
Conceptually, what I can't figure out is why the router works with
the Blackberry, but not the Belkin card. And, of course, I'm not
physically there, but rather trying to help over the phone, which is
difficult.

On Feb 20, 12:40 pm, Peabody <waybackNO784SPA...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> A friend of mine who lives out in the boonies has just signed up for
> Sprint's mobile broadband (EVDO) service, and it's working quite
> well for him.
>
> But he also got a Linksys WRT54G3G-ST router, which seems to me to
> be a very slick deal. You take the Sprint laptop card out of the
> laptop, and plug it into the compatible port on the router, and
> that's your WAN connection. But the router also includes a standard
> wireless router for the LAN side.
>
> My friend can connnect to the Linksys by ethernet cable with no
> problem. In addition, his son-in-law's Blackberry will connect
> wirelessly to the Linksys. But my friend's second desktop computer,
> with a Belkin PCI client card, will not connect wirelessly. The
> card finds the Linksys router, but when he clicks on Connect, it is
> unable to do so, and says something like "Windows is utnable to
> connect - use other software if available."
>
> Now the Belkin card DID connect to his old Belkin wireless router
> when last checked. So we're trying to figure out which setting is
> screwed up.
>
> For the moment, all encryption has been turned off. I've been
> through every setting I can think of with him over the phone, and
> everything seems ok.
>
> One thing that I've thought of since talking to him last is that he
> has his Workgroup name set the same as the router SSID. Could that
> be confusing Windows?
>
> Otherwise, I would appreciate any suggestions anyone might have.
> Conceptually, what I can't figure out is why the router works with
> the Blackberry, but not the Belkin card. And, of course, I'm not
> physically there, but rather trying to help over the phone, which is
> difficult.

Try and figure out which software is handling the Belkin wireless
connections. Belkin
may have supplied their own and make not work well.
Windows has its own software built in that handles the wireless
connections
It uses a system service call Wireless Zero Configuration service.
( Make sure its started
in the control panel under services. Also, Try and click on
the wireless icon (right click properties) and go to the wireless tab
and see if
the option :"use windows to configure my wireless network settings.
The computer
name and SSID have no effect on each other.

I have the same router with a Sprint Merlin 720 and havn't had any
connection isses and I
use WEP.

Hope that helps