[wireless] Linksys WUSB54G not receiving packets in XP

I just moved into a new apartment and I'm having quite a bit of difficulty connecting to my new roommates' existing wireless network. I purchased a Linksys USB adapter because the router they currently have is a Linksys brand (not sure of the model). The installation instructions said that XP would complain when I tried to install it, and to only have the cd install the drivers and not any software. Once the drivers were installed on my XP machine, I was able to see other networks in the neighborhood using the Wireless Zero Connection and even momentarily connect to one or two of them with no issues. But when trying to connect to the household network I encountered some issues:

1. they currently have WEP enabled. the ascii key they are using is a 16 character one, but WZC only allows me to enter 5 or 13 characters. doing some research online, it seems that the final three characters are just for overhead and I should be able to just enter the first 13. I am able to enter this as the WEP key and get no messages saying incorrect key, but I also tried putting in 13 characters of garbage and it still seemed to be accepted with no problems. Should I expect some kind of "Incorrect key" message?

2. When I was able to connect to other neighborhood networks (not able to do that anymore it seems) they would automatically assign me an IP, Gateway, DNS, etc. When I connect to my apt's, however, I only receive an IP and a subnet. The IP seems a bit odd as well (not matching 192.168.x.x at least). I checked my other roommate's settings, and the IP/Gateway/DNS numbers he has don't match the IP I received at all. I tried putting in all those numbers manually, but it doesn't seem to have any effect (ie, still having issues with problem #3, below).

3. WZC lets me connect to the household network (SSID is enabled and I can always see it on the list of available networks). The signal strength and link are always excellent, and it shows me transmitting packets at a rate of 11 Mbps (turns out I don't have USB 2.0 so I'm not going to get any higher than that right now). But throughout all of this, I have received exactly ZERO packets.

I've never used wireless before, but I'm not sure if this is a wireless issue or just a general XP networking configuration problem. I've tried to put as many useful details in here as I can remember, but if there are any other settings or numbers that would help in diagnosing this problem please let me know and I will try and post them.

Thanks in advance for any and all help in resolving this...

 

WZC? There should be an option for the encryption type and you choose WEP either 64 or 128.

It wont give you an incorrect key option you just wont be able to access the network. Are you using the linksys software or windows to manage the wireless device?

 

thanks for the reply.

no, on WZC the only two encryption types i can choose from are 40 (5 ascii) or 104(13 ascii). it rejects any other number of characters. i'm not sure if this is something specific to XP, or whatever updates i have on there. i had service pack 2 installed, but even after i rolled it back and uninstalled it, it still is very specific about allowing only 40 or 104 bits.

as for management - i have to use the windows software to manage the device. for some reason, none of the installation software will work with XP. if i try to explicitly run the setup for the Linksys configuration program, it just flashes up on the screen for a fraction of a second and then closes immediately, without installing anything. i can install the linksys monitor program, but this will only let me see that yes, there are networks around and i can see the router on my network, but it doesn't let me input any values.