Struggling with Vista

Posted on | April 9, 2008 | No Comments

Got a new machine over the weekend with Vista Home Premium (x64) and wanted to pull my hair out all Sunday evening. Spent 6 hours trying to diagnose why I could connect to the internet — yes, my router assigned an IP and I could ping/ftp/mail/https — but not do any updates or view http content.

Spent Monday evening trying to diagnose once more any and all solutions present on the web other than changing the wireless connection (from WPA-PSK to WEP or WPA2-PSK). Took it back to the place I got it, worked for them… but they were using an open connection. They advised me to place it in a similar situation with a different router. Not really possible as I don’t know anyone else really running WPA-PSK with TKIP encryption.

Tried downgrading the encryption/security on the wireless and that worked, but I didn’t feel secure. I’m sure there isn’t anyone in my neighborhood sniffing packets of data floating between my computer and the router, but that’s not the point. So after doing some more searching on the net, I found that my XP machine could have it’s encryption upgraded to include WPA2, which the router does support. So now both machines are running as encrypted as they can, but my big concern is still…. what if I have to go into an environment where they use WPA only?! Will it work or won’t it? Lots of people have complained on the forums. One combination of wireless NIC to router may work out of thousands. Not the best odds.

People suggest that Microsoft get off its butt and do something about all the connection issues. Perhaps something is corrupt and the OS can’t detect the corruption. I’ve found one more solution that I will try this evening and after that, if I still can’t get WPA to work… WPA2 it is.

On a side note, I’ve finally broken down and I (well the folks, but I’ll be paying them back) got Adobe Design Premium CS3 for the new machine. It should be coming any day. Woohoo to me.

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