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Bones:

Don't bother with all that stuff. Login to your router, with the wireless laptop turned on and connected to the network.

Click on "Wireless Settings"

Third down in the middle window you will see

Wireless Station Access List [Setup Access List]

Click [Setup Access List]

You will see a table of the MAC addresses of Available connected devices, one of which will be your laptop (hopefully, the only one). At the top of the page, check the box marked "Turn Access Control On".

Then click "Add" for each device you wish to allow to access your router. You can even pick your own Device names for them.

Once you've done this, we can worry about encryption. Access restriction is the important bit, IMHO.

K,

The gateway/router is a Netgear DG814 and the switch is a FS605. The printer is a Minolta colour laser with built in print server and RJ45 socket.

When the switch was connected to the router there was nothing to see or do - it just worked straight away. We're sure that it is working as 2 of the PC's are wired into it and they both work fine. Also the printer is wired straight into the gateway.

The router homepage is xxx.xxx.0.1

The 4 PC's have been automatically assigned as

xxx.xxx.0.2
xxx.xxx.0.3
xxx.xxx.0.5
and
xxx.xxx.0.6

Nothing else is being detected on the router homepage.

I don't know why nothing seems to be assigned to xxx.xxx.0.4 and wondered if this might be assigned either to the switch or the printer.

Using the menu on the printer, the IP address xxx.xxx.0.7 has been assigned to the printer. There isn't an option (that I can see) to assign a name to the printer although it does have something called a HW Address which consists of alphanumeric characters.

We've tried searching for the printer on the network using the HW Address as a name but to no avail.

The printer does have a homepage but it needs to be connected to access it.

I guess that one option would be to connect via the parallel port to access it.

Can't think of anything else to try.

MM - thank you. There was just the one device detected and that is now a trusted source with Access Control switched on.

hilary, does typing

http://xxx.xxx.0.7/

into a browser get you anything?

Otherwise try opening a DOS box and typing

ping xxx.xxx.0.7

and also ping xxx.xxx.0.4

You're right in that there is nothing to set on the switch. Some switches are actually routers and need IP addresses set etc., this one is a simple switch and should not be taking up an IP address.

Hilary hardware address = MAC address, not that this helps with what your doing...

Hil,

Maybe I should come over to your gaff and sort it out -- I could bring your ski boots ;-)

MM,

I thought you'd never offer.

:o)

K,

Typing http://xxx.xxx.0.7/ in a browser did the trick in so far as it gets us into the printer web page which is obviously a start.

The problem remains though that we still can't use "Add Printer" through Windows (which is XP Pro incidentally). We click the button for "a network printer" and it then gives us 3 options. "Browsing for a printer" doesn't detect it and the other 2 options both require a name which we don't seem to have.

Hilary, I looked up one of the Konica printers, although perhaps not your model, and it seems that it could do DHCP, which means that it will ask your router for an address. It might be that both are happening at the moment, i.e. the router is allocating an address and the printer is also receiving the address you set, so that it is getting confused. Try disabling the IP setting on the printer, e.g. set to 0.0.0.0, and also look around the other settings to see if DHCP is enabled on the printer. It's better anyway if the router allocates all the addresses.

How did you get the printer to work by connecting the PCs directly to the switch if you didn't have a printer name? Was it found automatically? If so you will have the name!

Hilary your printer should come with a CD with an install package on it. This ought to search for the network printer and then give you options to change the ip address and dhcp etc.

Edit - Just run the CD on your server or on one of your XP machines.

My laptop has a single 60Gb hard disc but this came partitioned in two, one of 29 Gb and one (D:\) around 20 Gb. Everything is saved on the C partition, but am I safe to store other stuff on D? I keep backups of my three work sites on the laptop and would like to keep it all there rather than clog up C which is getting quite full.

K,

Re your second para, I'm not sure what you mean by "How did you get the printer to work by connecting the PCs directly to the switch" as I've not been able to get the printer to work yet.

I simply connected the printer to the gateway with an ethernet patch cable and turned it on - nothing else. The only thing so far which is remotely positive is that I've been able to access the printer web page. When I try to install the driver, it can't or won't detect the printer and therefore doesn't complete the driver installation.

More worringly, I sometimes lose access to the printer web page without even doing anything! This is leading me to wonder if there isn't a hardware fault. I'm therefore going to try installing a different network printer to see if it's the machine or me being a total numpty and missing the blindingly obvious.

brianboru,

Thanks, but the manuals are pretty vague on network installation and instruct you to use the standard Windows drivers within XP. The Minolta drivers are for earlier OS's.

Spacie,

Thanks for your comment too. I did wonder if the HW address might be the same as the MAC address.

I'm running on XP Pro with Norton Firewall/AV etc as part of a BT Yahoo package. Should I enable the built-in XP Firewall or would that conflict with the Norton Firewall that is already running? Just curious.

TOK,

My, albeit limited, understanding of firewalls is that you should not enable the XP one if you have a third party one operating.

I use Trend Micro PC-Cillin and that fights the XP one - so I just use the Trend Micro one.

TP

TOK, I'm sure that with Norton you have to have only one firewall running, usually Norton's, but it does give you the choice. Go with Norton.

Thanks guys. I'll leave well alone.

My brother in law turned on his pc the other day and there was a sudden loud bang, a smell of plastic and everything went dead.
I suggested that the PSU had probably blown. He has since purchased a new one and fitted it. He switched on the system and it started to boot (he got the windows screen with the blue loading bar going along the bottom) but as the desktop came up the whole system shutdown/switched off. This occurs every time. We have tried entering the BIOS and attempted several times to start in safe mode but whatever we try the system shuts down within a very short time of starting (we never managed to get into safe mode).
Have you any ideas as to what the problem is, or how we can get windows to load long enough so we can try to use a system restore ??????
Thanks for any help you offer.

Hil, ah OK I'd understood that when you had connected the PCs to the gateway you had connected the printer too and got it working.

H/W and MAC address are the same but will be irrelevant here.

I have to say losing access temporarily etc. does sound like a conflict between the printer requesting an IP address from the router via DHCP and using the one you chose yourself. Have you tried removing your choice and turning everything off and on again including the router and gateway?

SC, quite safe to use the D partition, that's what it's for after all. The only thing I'd say though is that a laptop disk is a pretty bad place to keep a backup. Laptop disk drives don't have a long life and all you have to do is drop your laptop to lose all your backups.

Geoffg, could be anything really, motherboard, CPU, memory, disk drive, or any of the cards. You could exclude the memory by removing memory sticks one at a time, the expansion cards by removing all non-essential cards, the others by swapping parts with a working system. The other thing you could do is install the disk drive on a working system and check and fix any errors.

Actually thinking about it, check in the BIOS that the voltages being provided by the new power supply are within limits (the facility is normally there).