m06orama – nerdly musings from Winnipeg (Wordpress)

Wireless Zero Configuration (WZC) is a Windows XP service that you can use to manage wireless network connections. It’s pretty easy to use, but a lot of laptop PCs and OEM wireless network adapters still come with other software provided by their manufacturers. So which should you use?

Well, prior to Windows XP there was no choice and you HAD to use the card manufacturer’s software. Now you can often find yourself using “WZC” with XP automatically, whereas sometimes an XP laptop with builtin wireless may be set up to use wireless configuration software from Broadcom, Atheros or Intel (whoever manufactured the wireless chip), a lot of Dell laptops come set up to use Dell’s own Wireless LAN card Utility, and Lenovo or IBM ThinkPads may use IBM Access Connections, arguably the Roll-Royce of connection solutions for the professional road warrior. After market, if you install an add-on wireless network adapter from Belkin, Netgear, Linksys, or SMC you will usually end up with the card manufacturer’s software installed by default. In every case, the software does a similar job, but the details differ.

There is always a means provided to scan for a list of available wireless networks and to specify connection parameters. Usually all need to know is your network name and your WPA passphrase or your WEP key. Third party wireless configuration software often includes additional controls to turn builtin wireless on or off, perhaps to select or deselect WZC, screens for creating, editing, and saving connection profiles (something WZC does automatically), and even a screens to manage different sets of networking and security profiles for use in various locations such as home, office, school, and so on.

Which software you should use for Windows XP wireless configuration is almost a religious issue for some technical support folks, and this can be very confusing for typical users who sometimes may be caught in the middle. Some techies will always tell you to use WZC because it’s easy for them to have everyone use the same solution. This approach is great for both of you if it works, but often it does not and that depends on your equipment. One problem you can run into is that the tech support agent gets you connected one time using WZC, but after a reboot the connection doesn’t work anymore. Profiles have to be saved and changes have to stay in place which ever approach you use. Other tech support folks can take a more conservative approach and they may recommend that you use whatever software came with your wireless equipment and not change it. You are stuck in the middle. What should you do?

Well, for a start don’t let some pimply-faced kid from your ISP’s support department tell you how to configure your expensive computer over the phone. After five minutes he will be gone, leaving you with the results of your decision. How much did you spend on your wireless computer anyway, and how badly do you want it to work for you? The best thing you can do for yourself is spend a few minutes learning how your own particular computer is set up and how to use the wireless connection software provided by the manufacturer. If possible you should get the sales agent to show you this in the store, and make him spend time with you to answer any questions you may have. How do you turn the wireless on? How do you make a connection? You should make a decision not to change the way your computer is set up and to be prepared to stick with it. The worst thing that can happen is that your ISP technical support folks ask you to call your computer manufacturer for support.

It helps a great deal to read about wireless networking on the World Wide Web. Do not expect that your wireless connection is always going to work flawlessly. Do expect that it will stop working for you at an inconvenient time. Be prepared to connect through a wire if your wireless connection stops working for whatever reason. Buy an Ethernet patch cord and carry it with your laptop computer at all times. Get one at least twelve feet long for use in most situations. Do not rely on your ISP’s technical support folks to keep your computer running for you. Do read as much as you can of the support information your computer manufacturer has made available with your computer and also at their web site.

As for other operating systems, remember that Windows XP came out in 2001. All of the above is really yesterday’s news. With both Windows Vista and Mac OSX you have no choice but to use the wireless configuration tools provided by the computer manufacturer. Does this sound familiar? The different flavours of Linux still have some catching up to do, which is another reason to use the software provided by the computer manufacturer, whether it be OLPC, Dell, HP, or whoever.

May all your connections be secure, and your signal strength excellent!

Eeek! Aaargh! Overcome with a sudden fit of I-don’t-know-what I recently responded to Blogger’s invitation and now I have advertising on this page. Look! There it is! A real advertisment! Why, in theory I could even get paid real money for this! Or at least real pennies!

But hardly anybody ever seems to visit my blog, which – as I wrote recently – seems to be a pointless exercise other than as a means to enable me to know what it means to “have a blog”, frustrated novelist, geek, and nerdly philosopher that I am. There must be one of those “Grasshopper stories” in there. Like having some very fit but very old Chinese geezer saying to you: “To know what blog is, first you must begin, O Grasshopper! Then you will learn the secret!”

Actually, I did notice that I get quite a few hits for my “Man of Letters” image here, which file is served from my Apache2 web server at home. God bless all the folks at DynDNS.org. (By the way, the photograph was taken by a lady formerly of my acquaintance while I was sitting in the cafeteria at the National Gallery in Ottawa, reading the Comics page from The Globe and Mail on a Saturday in 1998. Not that you really wanted to know that.)

I am an avid reader of my web server logs. They show me that folks do searches here at www.blogger.com for other bloggers in Manitoba, or where the profile includes “Occupation: Yes”, and so on. Meanwhile, out on The Great Wide Internet, other folks searching for quotations visit my collection of Dicta, or they look for instructions on how to daisy chain two routers together, or configure their wireless, and stuff.

It turns out that once you have signed up for AdSense you can put ads on any web site you want to as long you meet Google’s content guidelines. I went a little crazy myself – well, crazier than usual – and pasted ads on various pages in the HintsAndTips and HowTo sections of my web site.

So far I didn’t actually bother to complete the tax and payment information for my AdSense account, but – given my perpetual state of anxiety – I’m already wondering if I might get busted by “The Google Content Guidelines Police” for putting ads on pages showing Airport or Windows Device Manager configuration screens. I should hope not, but who can tell.

When all’s said and done, I’m not sure that having this advertising is really “A Good Thing”. It does rather bring down the tone of my web site and I’ve noticed that at least some visitors seems to stop dead at the first page that shows an ad. Now where’s the AdSense in that?

I shall report to you what unfolds if I am allowed to post again from prison.

Probable cause No.1

The built-in wireless switch on your laptop is turned off. Look very carefully all over the computer for a physical switch or an alternate Function key setting marked “wireless” or “WLAN” or with a little icon that looks like a radio tower or a lollipop radiating waves or a flame or light bulb on top of a triangle. How come there’s no international standard for these icons anyway?

To get alternate Function key settings you have to hit the Function or “Fn” key plus the F key. These settings usually work like a toggle: you hit the switch once to turn the wireless on, hit again to turn it off. On a some computers it may have three states: “On” “Off” and “Power savings mode”. If you can’t find such a switch, try looking for an icon in the lower right hand corner of the screen that when you right-mouse click on it gives you an option to enable or disable your radio.

Usually the built-in wireless network adapter on a laptop computer is associated with a light that comes on when the adapter is powered on. The built-in wireless adapter can get turned off by accident, or by computer Power Management trying to save battery time. Again, sometimes there may be three states, for example “Light is off”, “Light is orange”, and “Light is blue”, corresponding to “On” “Off” and “Power savings mode” settings as above.

You can also try turning off your computer and then turning it back on after 10 seconds. This causes the computer to run through it’s Power-On Self Test (POST) procedures, which reinitializes all the hardware and software from the Basic Input Output System (BIOS) on up.

Probable cause No.2

There really aren’t any wireless networks broadcasting in range OR the signal is being blocked. First, try power-cycling your modem AND your wireless router AND your computer in that order, each about a minute apart. Usually the wireless router is the weakest link in the chain and very often it just needs a restart.

Otherwise, you may be in a big “wireless shadow area” or inside some sort of a Faraday cage that is blocking wireless signals. Try moving to another area. For example, if you are in a basement try climbing upstairs. If you are in a corner room, try moving to a different one. If you are in a bathroom, try outside the bathroom.

If you are inside a bank vault or some other kind of a metal box such as a freezer, an elevator, a car, truck or locomotive, or a multi-storey car park or any other kind of steel frame construction, try outside. If you are in a swimming pool or a large fish tank, try outside. If you are still indoors, try outside. If you are on a hiking trail in the wilderness, return to the nearest town and retry.

Probable cause No.3

Your wireless network adapter is powered on but it is still not working properly. Try uninstalling the device driver or the device, then turn the computer off and then back on, and try re-installing the device. If necessary, power-cycle the computer once more.

Improbable causes

Somebody just let off a nuclear bomb and all consumer electronics have been totally fried by the radiation.
Sun spots.
You have fallen into a black hole.

I got home from work this aft. and the guy in the apartment next door had his loud friends over again, which always seems to involve lots of loud talk and whooping and coughing while watching some dreadful macho game on TV. I get the impression some drinking might be going on, but I can’t imagine why everybody should be coughing so much, or can I? O such dreadful thoughts! Excuse me while I bang my head against the wall in penance.

Anyhoo, after a shift at “mah cawull senner jeyobe” I like to inspect my eyelids for holes. I just plug in my super new Bose Active Earplugs – well, not really – and then I deep-breathe my way off to Dreamland for a few hours. These last couple of days it’s minus 40 Centigrade outside what with a high wind from the North and I don’t even bother to take off my street clothes. Might as well be comfy in bed, I always say.

Tonight I dreamed I was back in my old corporate suit again and I was meeting with folks from several accounts including my next door neighbour, oddly enough, and we were talking about doing a big project to analyze their web logs in some super-dooper new way that would actually turn their IT departments into profit centers and get them all introduced to new and powerful friends so their careers could all just really take off, along with getting lots of lucrative stock options and stuff – hey, it was just a dream, right? Anyway, I had started to get all evangelical about these prospects when my next door neighbour hands me a note and asks me to go talk to his barmaid downstairs and fetch more beer, a request which I respectfully decline as we are nearing the end of the meeting and I want to be there for the finish when I have yet to deliver my outstanding deal-clinching closing speech.

I woke up shortly after this with the feeling that somewhere along the way I have at last learned not to do trivial things for other people when Great Things Are At Stake, as well as to now be able to talk such amazing blarney as would – at least temporarily – well, charm a motley bunch of low level IT department types into thinking they could get stock options and become sort of IT rock stars in this life. Who knew?

Well, it was a nice dream while it lasted, and I sure can dream that I talk such a good game!

I was back with my old corporate employer and somehow we got a new contract to work on this fancy-schmancy “heads up display” type military application thingy for infantrymen. It turned out I was the test subject. I ran like a greyhound across the test range which was cunningly designed to look just like a civic center with floral gardens in the middle of roundabouts and stately white marble buildings and stuff. I was doing fine until right at the end when all the other folks on the test range converged on me and started using me for target practice. That’s when I woke up.