HP 510 notebook PC can't 'see' WPA network

[stuck]

I have inherited a HP 510 notebook PC. It's only ever been connected to the web via dial-up so its OS has never been patched but it declares itself to be XP SP2, which MS tells me is WPA compatible. The wireless in it is an Intel PRO 2200bg, that to is supposed to be WPA compatible. Device manager says the driver is provide by intel, v9.0.4.17. Intel's website says the latest is v9.0.4.39. That doesn't strike me as very big difference or at least not one suggesting the latest version adds WPA.

If I set my Netgear 834g router to completely open. The laptop happily finds an unsecured network. If I choose WEP, the laptop sees a secured network. If I select WPA or WP2 or WPA/WPA2 mixed mode the laptop tells me there is no network at all (no, it's not as simple as the router is not broadcasting the network name).

Any ideas why the network vanishes when I choose WPA/WPA2 when I apparently have WPA compatible hardware, driver and OS?

(beyond the obvious answer that clearly one of these three components is not WPA ready )

stuck

[nitroshift]

Since the router is not broadcasting its SSID (aka "network name"), you must create the network profile on the laptop, input the name of the network you want to connect to and the network key. It is normal for the laptop not to see the network if it doesn't broadcast its name

[stuck]

I'm sorry but you don't seem to have read the bit where I said:

>(no, it's not as simple as the router is not broadcasting the network name)

That's the whole point, the 'broadcast SSID is ticked'. The network 'disappeared' when I changed only one setting on the router, namely selecting WPA.

No matter, it is working now. I wish I could give a clear explanation of what I did to correct the problem but it involved:

a) on the laptop, with wireless turned off

- clearing out every reference to any network I could find

- rebooting several times

- then turning on the wierless asking it to find and connect to the router, unsecured

- disconnecting

- clearing out every ref to any network

- rebooting

- asking it to connect to the network, WPA secured

B) on the router, performing a 'hard' reset every time I rebooted the laptop

Eventually, the laptop found the network. Connecting was then trivial, I just gave it the WPA key and away it went.

What ever was at fault, it was definitely something to do with the HP laptop because throughout all of this messing around an Acer laptop running Vista would connect to the network every time.

stuck

edited: Hmm, the forum software insists on replacing the letter b followed by a ) with a smilie

Edited December 15, 2009 by stuck

[TheReasonIFail]

I have to say that the issue must be the wireless card. I've got a Dell Latitude D600 with the same card and I can't connect it to my wireless network running WPA.

I actually setup a second WAP that is running WEP with MAC filtering as I have a few devices that don't like WPA.