Laptop retains 8 character passkey and won't change to new passkey

[QuartetmanIA]

I have an XP laptop that never had problems connecting to my home wireless network that runs on a Linksys router:WRT540 Wireless-G. But now is doesn't. Other computers, smartphones, etc in my home have no trouble connecting either.

The issue is that when I try to connect from my laptop, the passkey stored on it is 8 characters in length. My true passkey is 10 characters. Even if I type in the 10 character passkey on the laptop, it doesn't connect and doesn't save the 10 character passkey I typed in. It reverts to the 8 character key.

1. The security mode on my router is set to WPA2 Personal.
2. The WPA algorithm is TKIP+AES
3. I have MAC Address Filter Enabled. (I know that the MAC address of the laptop is correctly entered.) I have even Disabled MAC address filtering with no success.
4. On my laptop, the only selection I can make for WPA algroithm is TKIP or AES. It doesn't show TKIP+AES.
5. I have changed my WPA algorithm on the router to just AES and just TKIP, but that didn't fix the problem.

Thanks to an uninformed neighbor, I am able to connect to his unsecured wireless network and access the network. I even downloaded 43 Windows Updates, hoping that would fix the problem. It didn't.

I think the issue is the 8 character passkey that won't change to my 10 character passkey for some reason.

I have googled all over the internet trying to find a solution and searched here, but I can't find a comparable problem when I searched. It's always something different.

Is there some driver I need to download to my laptop that will list TKIP+AES as an option like it does on my desktop computer? Is that my problem? It didn't help when I changed it to just TKIP.

I hope I've given enough information to get this fixed. I feel bad stealing my neighbor's wireless, but I hate disabling my secured wireless network just to get my laptop working.

Thanks.

Dave

[tgell]

Try updating the wireless adapter driver on the laptop. When you right click your Wireless Adapter in Device Manager, what is the chip listed for your wireless?

I am not sure if this is the problem but WPS stores only 8 digits. Was the laptop configured with WPS when first setup? Try disabling WPS on the router.

[lbmest]

If updating the driver does not work, you could try uninstalling the adapter from the same place in Device Manager and reboot the machine. This will reload the driver.

[QuartetmanIA]

Originally Posted by lbmest

If updating the driver does not work, you could try uninstalling the adapter from the same place in Device Manager and reboot the machine. This will reload the driver.

That alone didn't seem to work. (See my response to the next suggestion.)

[QuartetmanIA]

Originally Posted by tgell

Try updating the wireless adapter driver on the laptop. When you right click your Wireless Adapter in Device Manager, what is the chip listed for your wireless?

I am not sure if this is the problem but WPS stores only 8 digits. Was the laptop configured with WPS when first setup? Try disabling WPS on the router.

Updating the wireless adapter seems to have worked. I disabled my wireless and logged on. The update went out to Windows and installed the driver. However, my connection still didn't work. After turning on my wireless security again, I noticed I had 8 more updates to install. During the install of the Malicious Software Removal Tool updates, my laptop suddenly reported that it was connected to my wireless. Happy day! Maybe I needed to wait for the Windows Updates to happen, but I thought it said it had already installed the adapter driver.

Thank you for your help. I always get great responses from this forum. There is one more thing I would like to share from a guy on another forum who suggested this to someone else having problems.

Joe says: "Disable all security and do not broadcast your SSID then use MAC address filtering and only allow the devices that you own to access your network. this eliminates any restrictions in speed caused by the encryption and (I think) is the most secure. You will however need to have a wired computer to set this up and maintain if something goes wrong so go buy a ethernet cable that reaches your computer or a laptop."

This kind of makes sense. I know that disabling SSID from view doesn't always keep the hackers from finding it, but if you have MAC Filtering enabled, shouldn't that be enough to keep everyone out that I don't want on my internet? I'm assuming that they couldn't even access my router 192.168.1.1 and enter my admin password either, correct?

What do you all think of Joe's suggestion?

Again, thanks for the hardware driver update suggestion.

Regards,

Dave

[lbmest]

Originally Posted by QuartetmanIA

What do you all think of Joe's suggestion?

Who would need to get into your network if you send UNENCRYPTED information by radio signal (wireless) when you can just sit and record it from any nearby receiver? What a load of ...hmmm... I can't say that on this site. How about equine/bovine manure?

Keep the encryption and MAC filtering. SSID broadcasting can go either way.
Security works better in layers so the more layers you have, the stronger your defenses are.

If you want speed, go wired.

[QuartetmanIA]

Rats! I got on my laptop today and no wireless connection - again. I don't understand why it can suddenly work after doing everyone's suggestions and then the next day...nothing.

As for turning off security and going MAC filtering only, I guess I'll have to defer to your warning about unencrypted transmissions being picked up by a local receiver. But I thought MAC filtering stopped anyone from getting access to my network and the data going over it?

Anyway, I'm back to the same problem. I tried to reload the driver, but it said it was already up-to-date, so the problem isn't that it lost it. And, my Windows Update is up-to-date too.

Such a mystery this problem is.

Dave

[lbmest]

You never gave any information on the hardware on the laptop - laptop model, wireless adapter model.
What security/firewall software are you running?
Have you got the latest firmware for the Linksys router?