One night, my laptop froze so I shut it down via the switch. When it restarted, I had to do a system restore.

A few days after I did the restore, I couldn't connect to my Home network anymore.

Another result I assume came from this restore, was my Norton Antivirus program, which fails to update itself and continuously says "At risk." The only way I can fix that was if I uninstalled Norton and reinstalled it. But I needed to do that everyday because every time I turned my laptop on again, it would go back to being "at risk."

I have another network called "Motorolla" though I don't know if it belongs to Optus like "Home" does. Home was my default network and before the system restoration, I never had any problems connecting to it.

I know that the problem is related to my laptop as my sister's desktop computer is still able to connect to "Home" fine.

Does it have something to do with my IP address or something? I am using Vista and using a wireless network.

I'm not very good with computers, I only know the basics, so please go easy on the explanations! Thank in advance.

Try the diagnostics that are recommended here:

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/networ...ts-282387.html

Yes, it may well have something to do with not being able to get an IP address. It's most likely that you're not connecting to the wireless network. To help you with that, I need to know more about the network. Is it security enabled? Do you have control of the wireless network? If not, do you know who does?

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Originally Posted by Perito

Try the diagnostics that are recommended here:

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/networ...ts-282387.html

Yes, it may well have something to do with not being able to get an IP address. It's most likely that you're not connecting to the wireless network. To help you with that, I need to know more about the network. Is it security enabled? Do you have control of the wireless network? If not, do you know who does?

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Yes, it's security enabled. And I have control over it.

Did you try the diagnostics that were recommended? What IP address do you see? Is there a default gateway? Can you ping the gateway?

Is this Windows XP or Vista?

Get into Network connections. Delete the current Local Area Connection. Open the wireless wizard (usually from an icon is in the system tray), On the left side of the Wireless Network Connections window, you'll see something that says "Change the order of preferred networks". Click that. A window will appear that has two areas, "Available networks" and "Preferred networks". Under "Preferred Networks", locate the network that you're trying to connect to. Click on it and click "Remove". You can remove other networks that you don't use also. Once it's removed, click the "View Wireless Networks" button under "Available Networks". Locate and select the network you want to connect to. Click "Connect". It should ask you for the pass phrase (if you're using a pre-shared key) and it should allow you to connect.

I called up my ISP. It works fine now. Thanks for your help anyway!