Wifi on German laptop

[Richardk]

Got a phone call from a friend who's hosting a foreign exchange student from Germany and he said that they couldn't get the laptop to recognize their wifi. Any reason why not?

I haven't gone over there yet but I know they have their wifi turned on, not sure about the security and they mentioned something about restricted frequencies in Germany. I tried searching for the "frequency" issues but didn't find anything and as for everything being "turned on" and such, I'll know when I get there.

I was just wondering if there's any obvious or inherent reason why their wifi enabled laptops wouldn't work here before taking a look myself.

[The Original Henry]

If it's using 802.11 then the frequencies and protocols should be the same regardless of country. Encryption might be an issue since the German machine may not be supplied with higher-grade encryption that would be available in the US. You can disable encryption on the connection to test this.

Most likely it's probably just a boring configuration issue. And the German keyboards have the W and V keys swapped, so have fun with that annoyance if you end up trying to type on the machine.

[G0ddard B0lt]

Just a spitball: maybe download, install and run NetStumbler to see if the hardware is seeing wireless networks.

[Fortune Green]

Check the wi-fi channel settings on the laptop.  Europe utilizes channels 1 through 13, but the US uses 1 through 11 only.

[DarkHumour]

FG beat me to it with a cool diagram.  One thing I've noticed with Vista (and presumably Windows 7) is that you have to create and *save* a profile to connect to a network.

Also I found that the Intel wifi drivers and software is better than the notebook brand (if it is an Intel card).  To reduce troubleshooting time I just downloaded and installed that.
(For Windows XP).

If their wireless router / access point is mac address locked or has a limited number of IPs being doled out that could be another thing or two  to consider.

DarkHumour

[G0ddard B0lt]

The problem could be a LOT of things: the OS, hardware incompatibility, wrong settings.

You won't know until you take a hands on look.

Don't give away a day of your time to fix this, though. This sounds like a favor you're doing. Don't be guilted into free services. 

[Aussie]

Wouldn't this for-ex student be better off getting on the internet with some German guys and kicking this around?  Can't be the first student who's come to the States and experienced the issue, surely.

[Richardk]

They're on a road trip so I'm waiting until they get back and I want to see the issue for myself before drawing any conclusions.

At least we're on the same page with possible issues and I suspect it will be something trivial or stupid.

And GB, yes it's a favor but I've borrowed enough tools that it's probably pay back time.

Oh, I also liked this image, which shows the overlapping of 2.4GHz channels:

[Richardk]

Thanks for everyone's help.

I never got to see the machine. They decided it was easier to buy a new one.