I have recently purchased a new laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium and
have had trouble connecting via my home Wireless broadband connection. I have
been through the connection wizard.

The situation I have at the moment is that when I reboot, my laptop doesn't
connect back automatically to the network. In the 'wireless connections
available' area it shows an 'unnamed' network. When I click on that and hit
'connect to' it takes me through and asks me to re-enter my SSID and WEP key.
After entering that info, I can then connect to the network. These settings
get lost when I restart the laptop.

Surely I don't have to do this everytime I reboot and want to connect to the
internet.

I would have assumed that once I have been through this connection wizard
once, it would save my settings and allow me to connect automatically every
other time.

I read another query on what seemed to be a similar topic and it suggested
turning the 'Network Discovery On'

is your SSID "hidden"? hiding the SSID won't really deter the bad
guys for long. WEP should be replaced by something more secure (it
really is not secure as it can be hacked in minutes), preferably
WPA2 but at least WPA.

a hidden SSID could explain the behavior you are seeing.



On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:04:03 -0700, Peter
wrote:

I have recently purchased a new laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium and
have had trouble connecting via my home Wireless broadband connection. I have
been through the connection wizard.

The situation I have at the moment is that when I reboot, my laptop doesn't
connect back automatically to the network. In the 'wireless connections
available' area it shows an 'unnamed' network. When I click on that and hit
'connect to' it takes me through and asks me to re-enter my SSID and WEP key.
After entering that info, I can then connect to the network. These settings
get lost when I restart the laptop.

Surely I don't have to do this everytime I reboot and want to connect to the
internet.

I would have assumed that once I have been through this connection wizard
once, it would save my settings and allow me to connect automatically every
other time.

I read another query on what seemed to be a similar topic and it suggested
turning the 'Network Discovery On'
--

Barb Bowman
MS Windows-MVP
Expert Zone & Vista Community Columnist
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/e...ts/bowman.mspx
http://blogs.digitalmediaphile.com/barb/

Hi Peter,

As already stated it sounds as though you have turned of transmitting the
SSID. If this is the case, may I suggest you manually set up a network
connection. Use Security type WAP2 and encryption AES, then enter your
pre-shared network key into the box provided. Once you have done this make
sure you have a tick in both Start this connection automatically and Connect
even if this network is not broadcasting, save and it will connect.

You should now find it will start automatically when you start the pc.

On a security front, regardless of what others think, it is a good idea to
turn off broadcasting an SSID, this along with setting up an allowed list of
Mac addresses and using WAP2 security along with AES encryption and of course
a good firewall, will make it as secure as you are likely to get for a home
network without paying out lots of money. Of course if some one really wants
to get it, they will. But the point is it will deter most people.

Best wishes,
Linda


"Peter" wrote:

I have recently purchased a new laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium and
have had trouble connecting via my home Wireless broadband connection. I have
been through the connection wizard.

The situation I have at the moment is that when I reboot, my laptop doesn't
connect back automatically to the network. In the 'wireless connections
available' area it shows an 'unnamed' network. When I click on that and hit
'connect to' it takes me through and asks me to re-enter my SSID and WEP key.
After entering that info, I can then connect to the network. These settings
get lost when I restart the laptop.

Surely I don't have to do this everytime I reboot and want to connect to the
internet.

I would have assumed that once I have been through this connection wizard
once, it would save my settings and allow me to connect automatically every
other time.

I read another query on what seemed to be a similar topic and it suggested
turning the 'Network Discovery On'