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Tally

Wireless Internet

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I've got this new laptop which uses a wireless internet connection. Someone from the shop came round to set it all up for me, but the conection seems to be unsecured. My computer can pick up several wireless connections from here, and they all say they are secured. I'm worried this means other people could connect to my wireless connection and/or access my computer, so I'm just using the wire for now. Does anyone know how I make it secure? I am using Windows XP.

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I've got this new laptop which uses a wireless internet connection. Someone from the shop came round to set it all up for me, but the conection seems to be unsecured. My computer can pick up several wireless connections from here, and they all say they are secured. I'm worried this means other people could connect to my wireless connection and/or access my computer, so I'm just using the wire for now. Does anyone know how I make it secure? I am using Windows XP.

Hi Tally,

 

You need to encrypt your wireless network but to do this you'll need to access your wireless router/access point. As you're using the cable option at the mom,ent, you can connect to your router/access point and configure it to be secure using Internet Explorer - the manual will tell you the address that you need to use.

 

Once the router/access point is configured, you then need to tell your laptop to use the same encryption and it'll ask you for the details when you try to connect to your network. Typically this will be a long string of numbers and digits.

 

The manual should explain how to do all of this but if you're unsure, I'd get the person who set it up to come round and set it up for you.

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I've got this new laptop which uses a wireless internet connection. Someone from the shop came round to set it all up for me, but the conection seems to be unsecured. My computer can pick up several wireless connections from here, and they all say they are secured. I'm worried this means other people could connect to my wireless connection and/or access my computer, so I'm just using the wire for now. Does anyone know how I make it secure? I am using Windows XP.

 

Wireless internet devices almost always display a list of all wireless routers / access points in the vicinity and whether they are open or secured. Check to see if your access point is secured or not. If it's not, then follow TheNeil's instructions.

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The manual is very short and doesn't explain how to secure the connection or set a password. The man who set up the computer seemed to have trouble with it and it said it wouldn't accept any of the passwords he tried. In the end he said that maybe it appears unsecured as it is not secured against me, just other people, but if that was normal, he would have suspected it from the start.

 

I am just going to use the wire until they get back from their Christmas break, which is not until mid-January. I paid for them to get the internet set up, so I would have expected them to set it up securely as part of that. We'll see.

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Thanks Warren, I didn't think of that.

 

I think I still need to do something because it seems to still be transmitting a wireless signal. I have unscrewed the aerial from the router and plugged in a wire, but it still lists it on the list of wireless connections, and the internet still works when I unplug the wire . . .

 

Hopefully I can sort something out anyway.

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For some reason this time, a different thing came up when I tried to set the security settings and it just worked. It is now password protected :)

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