A Little Help Required Setting Up Xp Pro Ics (warning: Tolstoy Post)

[slackula]

OK folks, grab some popcorn, this might get a little long.

I bought a wireless card for a desktop in the office to allow it to share the connection with the rest of the computers and customers.

I used the "set up home or small office network wizard" and all went fine and the ICS started working. Great, I thought, now I'll put a password on it. Once it had a password (WEP) it shows the wireless icon with a little red X and nothing I can do can get it to start sharing again. The "wizard" complains that the card is physically disconnected from the machine and so can't set it up for sharing.

Things I have done so far:

-Uninstalled and re-installed the card several times both using the "add hardware wizard" and also using the installation program that came with the card

-Tried setting everything up with all security and firewalls etc turned off and on in different combinations; no difference

-Googled the error messages and followed about 20 different guides, nothing helped

-Tested the machine with a wireless AP on the router to confirm that the card works - it does

-Shared the connection from a MacBook in a total of 3 or 4 clicks, with encryption enabled, and the XP machine can access the net wirelessly fine through the MacBook

-Shared the connection from a laptop running XP Pro, it worked fine with WEP, didn't try it with WPA, the desktop could access the net fine, so we can rule out the card being broken or not installed correctly. When sharing from the laptop the desktop, two macs and my Slackware laptop could all get assigned an IP address and could all access the net fine at the same time.

-With the normal wireless working I unplugged the ethernet cable from the AP and plugged it into the machine so neither of the net icons in the taskbar had a red X, ran the wizard and it still complained that the wireless card was not plugged in! GAH!!

All of the above has been tried with cold reboots in between each configuration change.

At this point I am (a) guessing that some registry key has been incorrectly set or corrupted or something, and ( planning very painful things for Bill Gates if I ever meet him. Short of reinstalling Windows does anybody have any ideas? I have no problem diving in with RegEdit if anybody knows where the relevant section is.

I know I could just leave the office set up running from the wireless AP but at this point it has become a matter of honour and I will not be beaten by XP Pro!

Many thanks for reading, sorry again for the long post.

Edited May 26, 2008 by slackula

[Rice_King]

At this point I am (a) guessing that some registry key has been incorrectly set or corrupted or something, and ( planning very painful things for Bill Gates if I ever meet him. Short of reinstalling Windows does anybody have any ideas? I have no problem diving in with RegEdit if anybody knows where the relevant section is.

For starters, have you considered using System Restore to go back to the time PRIOR to the first installation?

Edited May 26, 2008 by Rice_King

[malcolmswaine]

Sounds like a headache. I dont suppose configuring the connection manually rather than using the wizard helps at all?

I know its not a fix, but buying a cheapy wireless router might save you a headache. At least you can provide connectivity when your machine is powered down.

[slackula]

For starters, have you considered using System Restore to go back to the time PRIOR to the first installation?

Thanks, does system restore have the ability to selectively restore things, I have never really used it? This machine has had a few changes and stuff done since the ICS actually worked and it would be a real pain to have to reinstall all the new printers etc just to make it do what used to work.

Sounds like a headache. I dont suppose configuring the connection manually rather than using the wizard helps at all?

I know its not a fix, but buying a cheapy wireless router might save you a headache. At least you can provide connectivity when your machine is powered down.

I don't know how to configure the connection manually in Windows, all it does is give me these useless wizards that fail without really giving any useful info on what went wrong. Well, actually I do know how to set up the card manually, but I don't know how to set up the *sharing* manually. I have a spare wireless router but I don't like to admit defeat!

[Wolfie]

I heard vista... oh never mind

[guava]

Have you considered Ubuntu? It is the almighty solution to everything. I mean everything. Without even reading your problem, I'd recommend Ubuntu for any situation you can think of.

I'm joking of course. Linux drones flame away! You just never know which day your tedious tunnel vision geek ranting might convert me.

I do understand your stubborn desire to succeed and overcome all insurmountable obstacles etc but a wireless router is the easy, sensible, obvious solution. Better performance, more uptime, configurability, ease of use, etc. You don't want to be shutting down your network everytime you have to reboot, power down.

I'd hate to see you spend a lot of time and head banging eventually figuring out how to do this, only to realise that it is indeed a poor solution. You'll never get that time back again. The forehead bruises may heal, but the hair you tear out won't grow back.

Of course, I could be just pushing your buttons to make you even more determined to fail

[slackula]

<snip>

I do understand your stubborn desire to succeed and overcome all insurmountable obstacles etc but a wireless router is the easy, sensible, obvious solution. Better performance, more uptime, configurability, ease of use, etc. You don't want to be shutting down your network everytime you have to reboot, power down.

I'd hate to see you spend a lot of time and head banging eventually figuring out how to do this, only to realise that it is indeed a poor solution. You'll never get that time back again. The forehead bruises may heal, but the hair you tear out won't grow back.</snip>

Actually, I used to run the home WiFi network by forwarding the wired connection wirelessly from a Slackware 9 Thinkpad and it had much better configurability and ease of use than buying a crappy D-Link wireless AP for a couple of thousand Baht. Being a laptop it was immune to power fluctuations etc and the amount of detail that netstat gives is way better than a crappy web interface. It also allowed me to filter all sorts of things. I used to measure my uptime in years so rebooting wasn't that much of an issue, I only changed the setup because the Mrs complained that she couldn't print things when she was upstairs on the crapper if I had taken my laptop to work, no joke!

Also, I don't think it is a poor solution; 990 Baht for a pci WiFi card vs ~2000 Baht for a wireless AP, saves a few wires and the machine will be started and stopped when the office opens and closes anyway so no need for 24/7 wireless, I don't need some puke parking in front of the office every night and using my WiFi to download god knows what.

Meh, at this rate I'll flog the POS and replace it with an iMac that'll do it all in a flash with zero hassles!

[Rice_King]

For starters, have you considered using System Restore to go back to the time PRIOR to the first installation?

Thanks, does system restore have the ability to selectively restore things, I have never really used it? This machine has had a few changes and stuff done since the ICS actually worked and it would be a real pain to have to reinstall all the new printers etc just to make it do what used to work.

Sorry, no. With System Restore it is "all or nothing."

[whimsy]

I think you may well be right that this is a Registry problem. Possibly a permissions error on a critical key. Try using Regmon and or the newer Process Monitor to watch which Registry keys and resources are being used when you try to ICS the wifi card. If this still doesn't resolve the issue, compare this to what happens on the known good XP machine.

The Sysinternals tools and Mark Russinovich are respected as some of the best in the business for diagnosing what is happening under the hood with Windows. Microsoft agreed and bought the company.

You can download Regmon here. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb896652.aspx

or better still, download the entire Sysinternals suite here. You sound like a guy who could also make use of some of the other tools in the suite.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...7c5a693683.aspx

Edited May 27, 2008 by whimsy

[slackula]

Thanks for that whimsy and everybody, but I think I'm going to admit defeat and go with the wireless AP - I have spent far too much time on this already!

*shakes tiny fist at Bill Gates*

[tartempion]

Maybe you should have a look at this?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306126

How to configure Internet Connection Sharing in Windows XP

I would also first test connectivity of/for the other computers before adding a WEP key, you realise the other devices/computers in your network need to support WEB also (using the same key)?

Edited June 15, 2008 by tartempion