Wirelwess picking up but not connecting

[flobadoba_guy]

Using ubuntu atm and i wanted to check out what else was going on so i tried openSuSE and a few other distros and i have to say that as soon as i booted the Live CD for Fedora 8 it was quite amazing! everything just worked..including the desktop effects of which the default is very good and i think gives just the right amount of visual effects to be perfectly usable without distractions etc. anyway i digress...

i really want to switch from ubuntu 7.10 to fedora 8 but the wireless is the only thing thats not working (on an IBM thinkpad t42... when i boot up the live CD it comes up with the 2 computers in the corner and i click on that and enter in the hexadecimal key and of it goes with the green blobs... takes about 24568745 hours to think about it and then comes up asking me for the key again!...

i have looked around on here and other places via google and i cant seem to find a solution, or if there is something obvious that i have missed then im sorry... has anyone got a solution that works? *crosses fingers*

[Brian1]

Never run the Live cd but I think it may want the ascii version of your wep key.
I assume you are connecting as wep and not wpa or wpa2?

Brian

[flobadoba_guy]

well the key that i have in front of me to put into the machine (and what i put into linux and windows xp) uses letters and numbers... is that not hexadecimal? :S

[Brian1]

Just seen some distros only except ascii instead of hex values. Many tools on the net to convert.
What would be a good test to see WEP related or not is turn wep off on router and make a plain unencryted connection. if you can then it is not the module the nic is using.
You think that is weird, Vista when using Hex key whats lower case letters. That is not the Hexidecimal standard set back in 1957 I believe. Hex is actually created back in the 1600's.

Brian

[flobadoba_guy]

ok thanks, ill give that a go, should work on the live CD right?

[flobadoba_guy]

:'( i'm so confused! the key i have here is E274AE2387 is this hex or ascii? :S i put it in a converter and it didnt work i hjave tried lots of combinations and it just keeps asking me for the key to get into the netgear router :(

and also when i converted it i got a massive long number and when i put this in as either hex or ascii its either too long or too short :\

[flobadoba_guy]

and for the record i am now on my laptop using the fedora live CD and i have turned the security of on the netgear router... connected just fine!... obviously i would rather have security on... so still any info would be good please :( x

[Brian1]

Yes the key info you posted appears is hex and maybe 64bit key. You can just use google to find the many hex to ascii key converter out there.

Brian