Lesson 2- Getting the Living Room computer on the network and on the Internet
Introduction
In Lesson 2 we go to the Living Room computer to get it on the network and online. This computer is running Windows XP with the PCI card wireless network adapter. Just like in Lesson 1 we can it online using both the configuration utility that shipped with the adapter then using the utility that ships with Windows XP.
Recommended Networking Hardware
Hello and welcome to section 4 lesson 2. We're now on the living room computer, it's running Windows XP and this is the computer that we opened up the case and install the PCI card wireless network adapter.
We've already copied over the key.txt file with our security key from the USB thumb drive. We've placed the text file on our desktop. This is a good idea to do if your computers running Windows XP. Windows XP will often forget the security key so you want to keep it in a text file either on your desktop or your C drive or somewhere you won't forget it. This way if Windows XP does forget the key you can always open it up copy and paste it back in. Having done that it's now in our clipboard so we'll close that down.
Configure Windows Networking
Just like in Lesson 1 we need to make sure that a few settings are correct so that the networking and Windows will be able to connect to our router. To get the settings we'll right-click on the wireless networking icon and go to open network connections. In Windows XP the icon for wireless networking is two screens and this little icon that kind of looks like a microphone with some lines going out from it. To get to the settings we need right-click on it and go to properties. We'll scroll down and find Internet protocol TCP/IP. Highlight that and go to properties. Just like in Windows Vista we need to make sure that obtain an IP address automatically is checked and obtain DNS server address automatically is checked. Click okay and close down the network connections window.
Connecting with the Makers Configuration Utility
Just like in Lesson 01 we're going to show you two ways to connect to the wireless network. The first way is using the wireless network utility that came with the adapter and the second way we'll use the wireless configuration utility that ships with Windows. We'll double-click on the makers configuration utility to open it up and it's already scanned for wireless networks. On this computer it's only find one which is ours called homenet which is what we named our network.
To connect to it we'll highlight it and click add to profile. We'll change the profile name to homenet. It already has our SSID which again is the name of our network. We'll go to authentication and encryption and just like in Lesson 1 the configuration utility has detected the WPA2 PSK and the encryption type is AES. We'll right-click and paste in our key. Click okay and it's connected to the network.
Lets open up Internet Explorer to make sure we have an Internet connection. We are on the Internet. Lets close down Internet Explorer.
Connecting with the Windows Configuration Utility
Next we are going to turn off the makers configuration utility and connect just using the configuration utility built into Windows.
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