Friday, March 06, 2009

connecting Jeff & Florida's laptop

A few weeks ago, Florida called me saying they couldn't get into their laptop because their password didn't work. I referred her to a web site. And she called some tech guys, but it didn't work. They had Edgar (or Raymond - I always forget who's who) reformat their computer.

But now they couldn't connect to their shared printer.

When I got there, I saw they couldn't connect to anything (including the internet) because they weren't connected to wireless network. I saw several signals and fortunately their router signal was strong.

It needed a WEP key. Jeff wisely had stored it in a file and printed it out. But it still wouldn't connect. I tried different keys to see what would happen. And all of sudden it connected! I guess it took a while for the router to adjust??

I suppose if it didn't work, I could have reset the router from one of the other PCs which are wired to it.

Then time to connect the printer. I couldn't see it on the network. Maybe it was the firewall. But what I did was set up IPX on the laptop and I connected the printer using IPX.

I think before I might have tried using TCP/IP in the past, but it didn't work so well.

Then I went through the standard installs. Uninstalled MacAfee (out of date anyway). Install Avast. Install IE7. Install Firefox. Install Windows Defender.

Time to eat at Bravo. Quite good.

Then I went over to Circuit City, but it had already closed down. Evidently they sold everything ahead of schedule.

[3/6, posted 3/25]

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