FYI traveling with a laptop and Vista

[Silound]

The reason this problem happens is because Vista was designed to use a third party connection software rather than a driver based authentication.

For example, my laptop came with Vista, I loaded XP onto it, and the wireless worked fine anywhere. When I reloaded Vista, I encountered the same problem. Some research showed that Vista is looking for a third party software to actually do the connections and authentication (in my case, the Intel Wireless Package software that was originally pre-installed on my laptop).

Installing the XP drivers is one workaround, or you can use the connection software provided by your wireless card/chipset manufacturer.

[kydsid]

Originally Posted by Junior

I didn’t pay attention to the date of the post only that it was the exact problem that I was having.

I have my system set to auto update, and gave it little thought beyond that.

Auto update may not update your drivers and given the situation with some Intergrators (Dell, HP, etc), can actually make the problem worse if it updates a driver from the device manufacturer and not from the computer manufacturer. This is the most likely cause of your issue.

Originally Posted by Silound

The reason this problem happens is because Vista was designed to use a third party connection software rather than a driver based authentication.

For example, my laptop came with Vista, I loaded XP onto it, and the wireless worked fine anywhere. When I reloaded Vista, I encountered the same problem. Some research showed that Vista is looking for a third party software to actually do the connections and authentication (in my case, the Intel Wireless Package software that was originally pre-installed on my laptop).

Installing the XP drivers is one workaround, or you can use the connection software provided by your wireless card/chipset manufacturer.

Simply untrue. There is no such third party software in Vista, it may have been provided by some Integrators (Dell, HP, etc.). There is no reason to use software provided by the NIC card manufacturer to connect in ANY version of windows. The only thing required for any windows NIC card to work is the base compatible driver for that hardware. Vista merely changed the rules and views to connect and disconnect from networks. In fact you can still use base command line syntax to fix any connectivity problem in Vista.

[Silound]

Originally Posted by kydsid

Simply untrue. There is no such third party software in Vista, it may have been provided by some Integrators (Dell, HP, etc.). There is no reason to use software provided by the NIC card manufacturer to connect in ANY version of windows. The only thing required for any windows NIC card to work is the base compatible driver for that hardware. Vista merely changed the rules and views to connect and disconnect from networks. In fact you can still use base command line syntax to fix any connectivity problem in Vista.

You are correct, I simplified my answer perhaps a little too much. It isn't Vista itself that has this problem, it's the OEM versions where manufacturers want you to use all the pre-loaded software that have these issues. They hide certain features and options to try and influence you to install the pre-configured software they have agreements with companies to use.

You could decide in XP whether to use Windows' internal wireless connection interface, or to use the software provided by your NIC manufacturer. Some were worth using, some weren't. Vista is obnoxiously tricky to navigate and find those options, however, and most often the pre-loaded software is easier to use (possibly with the idea of being beneficial to the less intelligent end-user).


Edit: However, I freely admit I dislike Vista so much I don't bother to even try and learn all the ins and outs of it since I didn't bother updating my MCDST (I think it goes by MCTS now for Vista) for Vista's release. I'll wait for Windows 7 and re-certify then.