Belkin USB and PC card on Win2kpro/XP

[pips]

Hi there
I'm new to this site and would appreciate some help.
I have a Compaq WIN2kPro desktop with a Belkin USB wireless adapter and a Dell XP Home Laptop with a Belkin PC card adapter installed.

All was loaded as per instructions and as Admin user on both systems all was fine, the Belkin sw worked and I could set up 128 encryption and a SSID group. The setup was ad-hoc to use the dial-up account.

As i don't want to browse the web, [I use ICS in the desktop], with the admin account I set up power users on win2k and limited users on XP home both with the same usersnames and passwords.

The admin set up works correctly and although the user setup works allowing ping and file sharing between both systems.
it loses the SSID network group which then defaults to ANY, [the card default], and WEP is disabled. I assume this set-up would allow any 802.11 card to join my ad-hoc network, is that correct?

If i scan for a new AP, i find the the other system and it works OK. If I try to enable WEP it fails and loses the other system again.

Belkin support have been useless. 5 phone calls and 6 emails later the only assistance I have had is that I should contact Dell, Microsoft or Compaq to get file permissions sorted for their card.

Is there a file that may need to be given admin permissions on both systems to enable the WEP and user profiles to work correctly?
thanks
--
pips :(

[egkor]

I don't directly know the answer to your question.

However, it appears that one issue you have is that your "admin" user wireless configuration retains the SSID and WEP keys, but your "user" configuration does not.

Can you try this: Temporarily, set the "user" to have "administrator" permissions. Then go set the wireless configuration to your SSID and WEP settings. Verify the wireless link works. Then, remove administrator permissions from the user account. I would expect the SSID and WEP settings to remain for the user account.

-egkor

[pips]

Hi egcor

Thanks for the suggestion. Tried it on both systems by adding admin status temporarily to both sets of users.
This, as would be expected I guess worked and I could save a profile and reuse it giving encrypted profiles that I could swap for each user.

I assumed this would 'write' a settings file to the user profile allowing the set-up to be transferred to that user.

Alas it doesn't. As soon as you remove the admin rights each card defaults back to the ANY SSID and 'no encryption' status for the connection.

I can't see how Belkin can credibly suggest their software is useable on any network if the device on which it is installed has to have admin rights. Great to get really hacked really bad.

Pants or what?