Belkin 54G Wireless Router Users..

I remember a few people here are using the same Belkin 54G wireless router that I've been using this past year. It's very nice and works fine on XP, but since moving to Vista, I can't get it to do a thing. Firstly, I tried running the setup disk, but half way through it asks to reboot and says installation will continue after the reboot. Installation does not, however, continue, and the connection is Fubar'ed so bad that rerunning the NTL CD doesn't even restore it. I read on the Belkin website that they claim native support for the router in Vista, so I tried configuring it through Vista too, but again, nothing.

I could just go out and buy a NetGear router, since I just set one up for my Uncle, so I know it's easy and decent, but I'd prefer not to if I can get this one working. Anyone got one and made it work?

I'm not sure why you'd need the CD. You should be able to set the router up using its web interface.

The router is just a network device that works over TCP/IP. Assuming your ethernet works, there shouldn't be any drivers needed.

Are you sure the router is the problem?

Well I don't know if it's drivers or what, but there's a CD which does the setup stuff, and no instructions on how to do it without the cd, so I don't know how else I'd go about doing it. The attraction of the router was that it came with the CD which grabbed my NTL settings, and did everything for me. The downside to that is I have no instructions on how to do it any other way.

The ethernet connection must be fine, as I'm on here just fine now with just the cable modem.

Craig is right. You don't need the disk.

Reset your modem, your PC should get an IP from it. Log in to the router via your browser and set it up.

Try http://192.168.0.1
or http://192.168.1.1

Yep, I was trying that last night, but I can't get onto it. Maybe the router got damaged during unplugging, but it seems unlikely. Anyway, I went out and bought the cheapest NetGear I could find and despite the setup CD proclaiming that my ethernet port wasn't working, I connected it up and set up the router manually and it seems fine.

Thanks for the info. It's good to at least know I did need to get the new one, because I've exhausted everything on the old one.

Three possibilities:

1. Vista is configured to use IPv6, and that does not work with the Belkin Router.

2. You use an incompatible WLAN encryption method.

3. MAC filtering is activated and you are using a WLAN device that is not on the whitelist.

When you want to configure the router, always connect with a cable to it, never do it through a wireless connection. If everything fails, hard-reset the device, connect with a cable and re-configure it from scratch.

However, there is a chance that it is really dead. I also have a dead Belkin and three dead Telekom routers here. They just die after a while, I'm afraid...

Yep, I was on the wire. I never used it as a wireless router except for my PSP. I noticed that Vista was using IPv6, but wasn't sure what, if anything, I could do about that.

MAC address filtering, I assume, would only apply to wireless connections?

Perhaps it was the IPv6 thing.

I don't know if it still applies, but earlier versions of Vista had problems talking to certain DHCP servers, including those built-in to a bunch of routers/switches... Meaning it wasn't able to obtain an IP address, and therefore unable to communicate on the local area network.

There's a registry change you can make in Vista to make it behave 'normal' again, and work with said routers.

http://www.windowvistarepair.com/known-vista-issues/windows-vista-cannot-obtain-an-ip-address-from-certain-routers-13/

"This issue will occur because with XP SP2 the Broadcast flag in DHCP is set to 0 (meaning disabled), with Windows Vista the Broadcast flag is not disabled and therefore some non Microsoft DHCP servers cannot process the the DHCP discovery packets. This can happen on some routers as well."

Really annoying. :-?