Interpret Packet Errors on Wireless Link

[ups]

I have an Abit Airpace Wi-Fi Antenna that connects to the desktop through PCI-E.

When I installed it a couple of months back it worked fine although ICS could not be configured. So I just let the antenna on the system since I was planning to do a clean reinstall of the system.

This weekend, I formated the hard drive and installed XP. Updated with SP3 and all the security updates that he required. Installed the antenna drivers and bingo! Internet sharing using wi-fi! I was happy!

But Yesterday, when I tried to connect the laptop to the network, it only stated Limited Connectivity. It detected the network SSID, was able to connect with the correct key but then nothing.

Then I saw: on the connection window, there where 0 good packets and a increasing number of errors received. This happened on both desktop with the antenna and with the laptop.

Since I didn't ended installing all the programs, I decided to format the pc again in order to see If I could reproduce the problem or find a point where it would work. But now, it never worked, always showing an increasing number of packet errors whenever I turn the Antenna/connection on.

So what could be wrong? Would the antenna gone crazy? What Can I use to pinpoint the problem? A protocol analyzer would only be good at hardware level right? Or only be able to detect the good packets and not the bad ones.

[homecomputeraid]

There's a free utility called Wireshark for capturing packets:

http://www.wireshark.org/download.html

I'm not sure you need to go to all the trouble of installing and running a sniffer though.

It sounds like your computer is finding the access point but not obtaining an IP address. You should make sure the security settings are identical on the laptop and the access point, and make sure the password is the same if you're using WEP, WPA, or WPA2 (preferably WPA2 if you can).

To verify that this is the problem, go to a command prompt and type ipconfig /all. See what IP is assigned to the wireless adapter. If it's something like 169.254.x.x, the computer is not getting an address from the access point as it should. As a temporary expirament, you can turn off any security settings on the access point and the computer, and see if it will connect then.