Wireless hot spot config

I am having trouble getting an old laptop with a wireless card (MN-520) and
Win98 SE settings correct to connect to a wireless hot spot. From what I have
read (as I have little networking experience) I am not being assigned an IP
from the DHCP. The Broadband Network Utility shows an IP of 169.254.xxx.xxx
and that I have some signal strength, 2 Mbps, but that I'm not connected to
the network SSID (which has been plugged in to the Network Adapter
properties.)

An interesting note, when I enter the Broadband Utility and go to the
setting to select from available SSIDs, no networks appear. But if I cancel
and re-enter, then I see the different routers around the building I'm in.

Forgive my ignorance, but will I get a Gateway address from the DHCP server
once I do connect? Anyone that can shed some light on the subject will be
held in high regard. Thanx

I just dealt with the same kind of problem myself.

Try running the DOS command "ipconfig /renew_all" but only AFTER you
attempt to connect to the hotspot and get a signal using whatever
broadband network utility you have for your wireless card.

This resolved my problem but I've read old messages in this newsgroup
in which others said that this wouldn't work.

As near as I can figure, my problem was that my win98se PC was always
making a connection to my wireless router but simply wasn't being the
proper IP address by the router's built-in DHCP server. Either that or
the router may have been trying to assign an address but the PC ignored
it.

Actually, for troubleshooting, you may want to run "winipcfg /all" and
interactively play around with the settings to see what happens before
and after to get a better handle on where your problem lies. The worse
that happened to me was that I had to use <ctrl>-<alt>-<del> to kill
the "winipcfg" session and then reboot to start over. Ofcourse I used
Norton Ghost to back up my Windows partition just to be on the safe
side but this turned out to be an unused insurance policy.

But if your problem is the same as mine, "ipconfig /renew_all" should
work.

skora wrote:
> I am having trouble getting an old laptop with a wireless card (MN-520) and
> Win98 SE settings correct to connect to a wireless hot spot. From what I have
> read (as I have little networking experience) I am not being assigned an IP
> from the DHCP. The Broadband Network Utility shows an IP of 169.254.xxx.xxx
> and that I have some signal strength, 2 Mbps, but that I'm not connected to
> the network SSID (which has been plugged in to the Network Adapter
> properties.)
>
> An interesting note, when I enter the Broadband Utility and go to the
> setting to select from available SSIDs, no networks appear. But if I cancel
> and re-enter, then I see the different routers around the building I'm in.
>
> Forgive my ignorance, but will I get a Gateway address from the DHCP server
> once I do connect? Anyone that can shed some light on the subject will be
> held in high regard. Thanx