Can't connect Windows laptop to Airport Extreme - Help please! :-)

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Level 1

8 points

Can't connect Windows laptop to Airport Extreme - Help please! :-)

Hi all,

I just spent about an hour on the phone with Apple help without any luck. The tech ended up telling me that there must be something wrong with my wireless card and to check with my manufacturer (Dell) to solve my problem. * sigh *

I just got the Airport Extreme because the folks at the Apple store said it would be able to connect to both Mac's and Window's PCs. The Mac laptop has been able to connect to the wireless on Airport Extreme without any problem. But I can't get my Windows laptop (the real reason for the purchase of the wireless hardware) to be able to get to the web. It is a work laptop running windows 2000 professional.

I installed the airport utility software (all updates applied and it is v5.3.2). Unfortunately there were no instructions for what I should do after that was installed.

The part I don't understand is that even before I installed the Apple software, if I went to my Windows Wireless Connection Network box, I can see the Network created on the Airport Extreme, and I can enter the correct password, and it says that it is connected. But then when I open the Internet Explorer, I can't connect to the web. As long as I have connected to the network in this manner (through the Windows Wireless Connection Network), when I open the airport utility, I can see the network listed there, but still can not connect to the web. If the Windows connection is turned off, then the airport utility can not "find any Apple wireless devices".

I'm not even sure what I am supposed to be doing at this point. When I have the Windows connection turned on, and open the airport utility, am I supposed to click the continue button to get the connection started? Or is it supposed to just connect automatically? If I do try to click the connection or the manual setup buttons, it tries to read the apple device configuration, and then gives me error message 6753.

I've been searching for this error message, and the only thing I have found is TONS of people having this same problem, and NO ONE being able to solve the problem. I've read in several places that you have to use some sort of Hex version of the password, and saw in a different post that you get this by going to the "BaseStation" menu, and choosing "Equivalent Network Password" (ENP). When I go to the BaseStation menu, the ENP option is grayed out and I can't choose it. And even with the advice of using this equivalent version of the password, I've never seen anyone actually say that it worked to solve their problem.

Can anyone help? Apple tech support seems to have not heard of this issue, or maybe they just don't have the solution well documented in their support database.

Thanks so much for any assistance!

Barb

Dell Latitude, Windows 2000

Posted on Sep 21, 2008 7:34 PM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

158,208 points

Sep 21, 2008 8:06 PM in response to brksmith

Hello brksmith. Welcome to the Apple Discussions!

I assume that you are using both the "802.11n (b/g compatible)" radio mode and "WEP (Transitional Security Network)" for wireless encryption on your 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBSn) ... correct? ... and you need to use WEP because Windows 2000 does not support WPA or WPA2? Finally, is your Windows 2000 PC able to connect wirelessly to the AEBSn if you disable wireless encryption?

If so, I suggest that you try changing to "WEP 128 bit". To do so, you will need to change the AEBSn's radio mode to "802.11b/g compatible." To access this mode, just hold down the <Option> key on a Mac or the <Alt> key on a PC when selecting the radio mode option.

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Answer 2

Sep 21, 2008 11:36 PM in response to brksmith

To add to what Tesserax has said, you don't need to worry about using Airport Utility on your Windows PC. It's only used for configuring the base station, and you are doing that from the Mac.

Have you tried connecting the PC to the Extreme using an ethernet cable?

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Answer 3

floydz

Level 1

0 points

Oct 19, 2008 7:18 PM in response to brksmith

I have the same issue, Just bought a TIME CAPSUL and setting up the Airport extreme base station. I can get a great wireless connection with my IMAC G5 , running 10.5.5. But it will not connect to the PC, On the network PC I see the network, but it will not connect. In fact someone has an open network in the neighborhood the PC will connect to it. But not my Airport Extreme.
I tried OPEN, No passwords,
I tried WPA2 Personal, with password.
The PC will initially say triing to aquire network address, then come back and say no or poor connection.

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Answer 4

Dec 7, 2008 9:29 AM in response to floydz

Very similar issue, except that I think I should be able to eliminate hardware as an issue. With my MacBook Pro running with OS X,, all is fine. However, running XP (via BootCamp) shows me the network but will never connect. The network key is definitely correct, but it will not connect. Very frustrating.

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Answer 5

Dec 21, 2008 11:20 AM in response to brksmith

I'd appreciate an answer to this too…I just replaced my iMac with a Mac Pro and I didn't realize it didn't have an Airport card, no big deal I just used an Ethernet cable, but when people visit I'd like for them to be able to use their (Windows and/or Apple) laptops. I tried changing my password from WPA to WEP but it didn't change anything. (People with Windows laptops have their computer say it is connected but nothing goes through.)

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Answer 6

Jan 3, 2009 4:43 AM in response to floydz

The problem is the encryption and how your notebook handles it rather than a Time Capsule problem. I had similar problems until I updated the WLAN drivers on my IBM T41.

The way I convinced myself it wasn't an Apple problem was to connect my IBM T41, via ethernet, to my AEBSn. I was able to connect to internet so I knew it was a conflict between my wireless card and the AEBSn.

I am now using the WPA2 encryption for the AEBS without issue and connecting many different types of hardware; three iPod Touches, two MSI Wind Netbooks (Win XP SP3), one IBM T41 (Win XP SP2) wirelessly and both my 20" iMac and Dell 8250 Win XP (SP2) by ethernet

The MSI Winds are brand new and they would connect to the AEBSn but couldn't get an IP address from the internet (Limited or No Connectivity error message). The AEBSn was using WEP encryption. After doing a little research I found that WEP was a very common cause of this error message so I switched the AEBSn to WPA2 and everything works fine now.

Don't assume that because you can't connect via OPEN it isn't a encryption issue because my Winds wouldn't connect that way either...it wasn't until I changed to the WPA2 Personal that they connected.

You may also need to change the program that handles the WLAN connection, sometimes Windows handles it better but for the newest addition to our household, the MSI Winds, I am using the Realtek utility that matches the WLAN card and everything is hunky dory...

Finally sometimes firewalls will prevent getting the IP address...doesn't happen often but it has happened to me so I would double-check that by turning off the Windows Firewall and just verify that it isn't the firewall (that's never been a problem with my Apple AEBSn but it was a problem with an older Dlink g model).

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