Friday, August 19, 2011

Wireless and Windows 7

I've searched the net for two days on this particular issue, and did not find the answer there. Only by fussing with router settings via a wired connection was I able to make this work.

With this laptop (a Dell Inspiron, Windows 7 64-bit, Intel Centrino Wireless N-1030 chipset), I was attempting to make a connection to a Cisco / Linksys WRT54G2 v2 Wireless G Router. No joy, over an over, no joy. I changed my laptops WiFi adapter settings, with the same result:

Wireless security failed.

Network Adapter: Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 1030
Interface GUID: {1cb1c3dc-92fc-4304-80ea-a13fd3aceeb3}
Local MAC Address: BC:77:37:4D:4E:19
Network SSID: Justins
BSS Type: Infrastructure
Peer MAC Address: 00:22:6B:52:C9:9B
Reason: Dynamic key exchange did not succeed within configured time
Error: 0x0


I was stumped. Other posters suggested all sorts of remedies - changing wifi channels, degrading security to WEP (NOT going to do that), adjusting power options for the nic, etc. None worked.

It should be noted that a number of other devices (two smartphones, an intel-based macbook pro, another Dell laptop) were all able to connect to the wifi without issue or reconfiguration.

Prior to committing ritual seppuku, I did more digging into the router, using a wired connection, and here's where I stumbled upon what worked:


I made the adjustment to the "WPA Algorithms" setting. It was set to "AES", and I moved it to "AES+TKIP"

That did it. So, what does that mean? Is Windows 7 (or the related driver for this NIC) unable to connect using WPA2? Does Win7 require the use of TKIP instead of AES?

Who knows. I only hope that this might be helpful to the next guy down the line who might be looking for some small light in the wilderness...