I'll try to explain this the best that I can as I'm not much of PC literate person.

I have a laptop connected wireless using a Netgear router that's only a few months old.(PC is about 3 years old). The wife could get on the net all day long yesterday but then when I got home the connection was slower than dial-up so I started to check around to see what was going on.

First thing I noticed is my network name. The name is packman but now it came up listed as "packman 2 (packman)". Never been like this before so I disconnected and then tried to re-connect to the network.

Now the second problem happens. When it tries to connect it is now saying my security key doesn't match. The key is saved so it will connect automatically so it should be the same as it's always been. At this point I stopped what I was doing and decided to scan the PC using MS Security Essentials which came back with nothing wrong. So now I manually type in my security key and still says it doesn't match.

Third. I rebooted the PC, Modem, & router. Once everything was up and going. I had to manually select my network as it didn't do it automatically like usual. Then I got a error message saying that there is another PC on my network using the same IP. This is odd cause the only other thing on my network is a wireless printer. This message only popped up once. Anyway it still says that my security key is incorrect.

Now after this I decided to plug directly into the router an voila I'm back on the net but it is still coming up as packman 2 as my connection when it should only be packman.


Anyone have any ideas on what is going on here? I think my next step will be to completely reconfigure the route again and see what happens.

Thanks,

 

I recommend doing a factory reset on your router. It sounds like your SSID (network name) was changed, and that doesn't just happen by itself. Are you sure you're wife or someone else wasn't messing around with your router configuration?

Anyway, do the factory reset. Should be a small button some where that you need to push and hold with a pen tip. When you set it up, change the default admin password on your router. Also, look in to using WPA2 security. It's much more secure than WEP keys, and it's easier to add devices to your network, once set up properly. Good luck.

 

That's what I was thinking too. It's just me and the wife on the computer and all she knows how to do is to turn the PC. I'm already using the WPA2. Any other ideas on improving security?

 

Nah, I think you will be good with WPA2. When you said security key I assumed you were using WEP keys. I use Linksys, but all routers will have a default username and password to access your router set up page ("http://192.168.1.1"). I recommend changing that default password, and then redoing your configurations.

 

The security key that I mentioned was to log on to the wireless network. When I originally installed the router I did change the default password on the router. When I get home tonight I'll be redoing the router config.

 

In addition to resetting it to factory settings like ChrisT said, I would:

-Change the SSID to something other than Packman. Not that it's a bad SSID name, but presuming that a neighbor with ill intentions setup his router as "Packman2" with the intent of getting you to connect to it, you want to be sure you're really connecting to your router.

-Set a ridiculously long (at least 16 characters) admin password and WPA passkey, with a mix of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation. Then write them down and tape it to the underside of the router

-Setup a MAC address filter on the router so that only your wireless devices can connect to it. If you need more info on how to do this, let me know.

-Turn off remote mangement of the router, so that you have to plug a network cable into it to get to the management interface.