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New Questions about a Vaio Laptop
Greetings, folks...

Someof you may or may not know that my Dad suffered a series of debilitating strokes about a year ago. He's been holding his own recently, but that's not the point of this post. Since he can no longer use his computer, it has come over to me. It is a Sony VAIO PCG-K33 laptop, with a 1.83GHz "Mobile Intel Pentium 4" (is that a Centrino?), and 488MB of RAM, 1MB of cache (I assume that's level 2), and a 60GB hard drive.

Note too bad, for a 2 year old computer.

I'd like to scrub it (it has XP on it, but I can't find the "recovery disk"; it's buried somewhere in Mom and Dad's house), put W2K on it, and use it at work as a roving VNC station. To do that, I have to get the wireless working.

Now the thing is supposed to come with an internal wireless, but no matter what I do I cannot get the internal wireless to operate (XP keeps telling me to turn on the radio, which I have done, to no avail). Dad also bought a Linksys wireless-G PCMCIA card, which does appear to work...or at least did previously. I'd like to use the internal wireless if possible but I can't seem to fool it into recognizing (or even seeing) my network.

Appealing to the great sentience [sic] of the LRPD, anybody outthere have any idea how to get ths thing to see a network?

(NOTE: I use WPA-PSK encryption, and have a mac filtered connection. I think I shoudl still be able to see the network, but not connect to it until I allow the new computer's MAC into the network, and give it the correct WPA-PSK key. However, I can't eve see the network, even when I have the computer next to my desktop, which sees a 70% strength connection.)

thanx in advance
jb4
"It's hard for me, you know, living in this beautiful White House, to give you a firsthand assessment."
George W. Bush, when asked if he believed Iraq was in a state of civil war (Newsweek, 26 Feb 07)
New There's may be another wireless config running.
My SIL's Dell laptop running XP just had a similar problem here. The network couldn't be found and turning it on in Windows resulted in it immediately being turned off.

There's Windows XP's wireless configuration thingy, and the Dell came with an Intel wireless configuration thingy. All the changes had to be made to the Intel software's configuration for it to work. Once I figured that out, and changed the WEP key from 64-bits to 128-bits and re-entered the key, it worked fine.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sony did something similar in an attempt to make things "easier".

Does [link|http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windows.networking.wireless/browse_thread/thread/c50848c4f1d44722/38a662e4bc0b85b6?lnk=st&q=vaio+wireless&rnum=17&hl=en#38a662e4bc0b85b6|this] help a little?

If you need to verify that the hardware's working, a MEPIS or Knoppix or Ubuntu live CD may help.

HTH a bit. Good luck!

Cheers,
Scott.
New Some thoughts.
"Mobile Pentium 4" predates the Centrion, AFAIK. So the wireless will be some other device.

If XP keeps telling you to 'turn the radio on' that probably means it can see it. That's good. But if, as you say, that doesn't work, then I'd be looking in the BIOS for some sort of override.

I think getting into the BIOS on VAIOs involves Alt+F2 at the 'SONY' prompt.

Wade.


Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
 
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please



-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne.

· my ·
· [link|http://staticsan.livejournal.com/|blog] ·
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New Radio may have an actual switch on the case.
My new lenovo has such a beast.
Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry.Adrian Belew
New He said he'd tried that.
I thought of that, too.

Wade.


Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
 
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please



-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne.

· my ·
· [link|http://staticsan.livejournal.com/|blog] ·
· [link|http://yceran.org/|website] ·

New IIRC, the Centrino is based on Pentium III.
Which Intel reverted to because it was a better design than Pentium IV.

Have you looked at My Computer | Properties | Hardware | Device Manager

And then check Network Adapters?
Alex

When fascism comes to America, it'll be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. -- Sinclair Lewis
New A note on Centrino
It's not a CPU designation. A product carrying the Centrino moniker will have intel CPU, chipset and wireless doin's.

That CPU might be a Pentium M, or it might (now) be a Core processor.


Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
[link|http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?pwhysall|A better terminal emulator]
[image|http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h262/pwhysall/Misc/saveus.png|0|Darwinia||]
New Got it working...
...However, it appears that Sony's internal wireless is rather...how shall we say...retrograde? Benighted? Antedeluvian? It has no support for any flavor of WPA..if you ain't WEP, you aint gonna be secure in Sony-land.

:-(

So, it appears I'll have to use my Dad's Linksys adapter card for home use (which does understand WPA), and the internal adapter when I haul this to work.

Thanks to the omniscient LRPD mind (once again) for the help and pointers...
jb4
"It's hard for me, you know, living in this beautiful White House, to give you a firsthand assessment."
George W. Bush, when asked if he believed Iraq was in a state of civil war (Newsweek, 26 Feb 07)
     Questions about a Vaio Laptop - (jb4) - (7)
         There's may be another wireless config running. - (Another Scott)
         Some thoughts. - (static) - (2)
             Radio may have an actual switch on the case. - (bepatient) - (1)
                 He said he'd tried that. - (static)
         IIRC, the Centrino is based on Pentium III. - (a6l6e6x) - (1)
             A note on Centrino - (pwhysall)
         Got it working... - (jb4)

That’s a great, great story. Therefore, it’s too good to be true.
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