Computer not recognising my wifi but does see the neighbours'

[olympus]

I have two computers that I mainly use, a self-built desktop with XP and a Toshiba laptop with Vista. Both these computer 'see' and currently allow me access to the internet via my Talktalk broadband. I have a third computer (running XP) in a different room which is not used so much (used for graphics work mainly) and which, the last time I used it, allowed me on-line with no problems. When I tried to go on-line with this third computer yesterday I could not as it was not 'seeing' my Talktalk broadband. However, and most annoyingly, it was 'seeing' my various neighbours' Talktalk, BTinternet and BTfon (whatever that is) networks. Refreshing the available networks list didn't help.

Anybody got any ideas about this before I do battle with Talktalk's helpline (in India!) tomorrow)

[Milo Minderbinder]

try restarting the router, then restart the PC
It could just be the DNS resolution has got messed up. A reboot should clear it

[Capetonian]

I have this problem sometimes. There is an option when you see the list of wifi networks to 'ignore' those you don't want (a bit like the Pprune 'ignore' function'). By eliminating those you don't want and then disabling and enabling the wifi, or a reboot as suggested, you may solve the problem.

[green granite]

The first and obvious thing is to take your laptop and put it beside the PC that is not seeing the router to check that the signal is ok there, if it isn't try powering your router down by switching off the mains power and pulling the power jack out of the router for about 15 secs to let the capacitors drain, re-plug and switch the router back on.

BT fon is a system that allows participating people to connect to the net using any other participating persons 'BT Home Hub', it's very useful on holiday. (It's only available to BT customers.)

edited to add: It's no good, I just type too slowly to beat you lot.

[lomapaseo]

What Milo said

I had that one time and thought it was just a wek signal and called in a tech. He saw the week signal and tried various antrenna movements etc. But the first thing he did was to password protect it. After about 5 mins he reognized the real problem was a dead router and that the signal was coming from my neighbors smilar named router, which he had now protected with my new password !!!

He evenually made it all right

I now name my routers "server not found" which seems to be unique among my neighbors

[green granite]

I now name my routers "server not found" which seems to be unique among my neighbors

Mines called 'Access Denied'

[olympus]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I should have said that I went through the routine of powering-down the router and the computer(s) then powering-up again yesterday (a Google search suggested that) but without any success.

Following advice today, I placed the laptop next to the problem machine and yes, it's connecting to the internet perfectly so I guess the signal strength is OK. I did try uninstalling the network card in Device Manager and then re-installing the drivers when Windows recognised it on re-start with no noticeable change except it's now recognising more of my neighbours' networks but still not mine!

[Milo Minderbinder]

if its not actually seeing the network like that, its often a case that the settings on the PC have the wrong password or protocols set
Easiest thing to do in that case is delete the settings on the PC for that network and then recreate it
any chance the router settings have been changed?

[A A Gruntpuddock]

Is the system set to the same speed as the others?

This program will show what networks are running at different frequencies -

inSSIDer for Home – Discover The Wi-Fi Around You | MetaGeek

[olympus]

Thanks for the additional suggestions.

I have to take junior dog to the vets this afternoon to have a ripped dew claw attended to and vet visits always take twice as long (and cost twice as much) as I think they are going to, so this little problem will have to be on hold for a while.

[axefurabz]

I thought the thread title said Computer not recognising my wife but does see the neighbours'.

Don't suppose that could be your problem? My wife can upset a computer at twenty paces

[Pelikal]

I've been trying for ages to get my computer to recognise the neighbours wifes but to no avail.

[olympus]

A quick update; Talktalk support were of no help - they really only offer help to connect one device so there was no enthusiasm to help me connect a third device.

I googled this and it seems that I'm not the only one with this problem and the consensus seems to be that it's a router channel issue. Before I could get into trying different channels the machine got itself into a cycle of booting and restarting from the desktop. How I managed this I have no idea but I've decided to cut my losses and re-install the operating system.

Thanks to all for the suggestions.

[unclenelli]

It could be a WEP attack
Someone has hacked your Wi-Fi and changed the password/key.
They can sit outside/nextdoor and use your bandwidth for free.

Plug in PC to MODEM via copper cable and restore it.

[olympus]

Further update...

I had a bit of free time this afternoon so I moved the offending computer from its usual position to my computer workbench (aka the dining room table) and started to troubleshoot the problem and if necessary, re-install Windows.

After re-seating the RAM I removed all unnecessary PCI cards (I've learned from bitter experience that the fewer of these the smoother the opsys installation) and for good measure changed the graphics card. After initially booting to a BIOS screen that informed me that my CPU frequency settings had changed, I played around with the BIOS settings but basically ended up with it as it was before the trouble, restarted and it then booted normally. Then shut down again and reinstalled the network card and guess what... it recognised my Talktalk network.

I had a bit of a problem with the 'Windows cannot find a certificate to log you on...' caption but then I remembered to uncheck the 'Enable IEEE802.1x authentication' box in Properties and I am now on line as if nothing had happened but sadly, no wiser as to the cause of the problem.

As I mentioned in my original post, this machine is not used very much and when I checked the Firefox version I saw that it was running Firefox 2!

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

[mixture]

Plug in PC to MODEM via copper cable and restore it.

While you're ad it .... re-configure the thing with proper security.

WEP is laughably easy to break these days.

WPA2-PSK with AES (NOT TKIP)