How to Make Your Laptop Wireless

In this guide we will answer the question of how to make a laptop wireless.

Most current laptops have wireless cards installed in them. This is an advantage because then you don’t need to buy a separate card and install it by connection to the USB or the PCMCIA. With new laptops, you will always find these wireless cards.

But, if your laptop is older and doesn’t have a wireless card inside, then you will need to buy a USB card or PCMCIA wireless card and install it on them.

Now, if we have a wireless card inside, then it’s mostly ready to work already. All you need for them to work is a wireless connection. The two biggest internal wireless card suppliers currently are Intel and Broadcom. To find out which card your laptop has, just look for a label on your laptop. If it is an Intel or Broadcom wireless card, you will find it inside. Another way is to get special software like SIW, which will show you all the devices on the laptop. With this software, it is easy to find what card is present inside the laptop.

Let’s suppose that the card inside your laptop is a wireless card from Intel. In that case, the best way to get your drivers would be to get them directly from the Intel website. Remember that the older drivers for Intel wireless cards won’t work properly, which means you have to go for the updated ones. You can download them from here.

Once you have downloaded the drivers, you will see an icon as shown in the illustration in your system tray. Click on this icon. It will display a dialog box like the one below.

It will show the available wireless connections around your laptop. Choose the one which you know is your router. All the information necessary to make a wireless connection to the router username and password is printed on a label that’s attached below the router. Or, it can be present in the form of printed instructions from your Internet provider. Sometimes it is included in a DVD which you receive from your Internet service provider. This helps you directly know your username and your password.

You will see an option with your Internet router’s name. Click on it and then click on the Connect button. It will ask for the username and password. Enter this information. Now, your Internet should work on your laptop. When the laptop with the Intel wireless card gets connected to the router and the Internet, the icon in the system tray will turn green.

If it is not possible to connect to router, go to Control Panel > Network Connections and there you will find the icon that’s named Wireless Connection. Right click on it with your mouse, choose Properties and then set it to obtain an IP address and DNS automatically. Then, go check again to see if the laptop can access the Internet.

If your laptop has a Broadloom wireless card, then the connections follow the same procedure. You start with the system screen and click on the icon. A screen similar to the one below will pop up.

If your laptop doesn’t have a wireless card inside, then you can go about making it wireless by adding an external wireless card. You will need to install it to the laptop. Some of the popular laptop wireless cards are from companies such as Linksys, Netgear, Trendnet, and others.

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How to Build a Computer Network

How to Set Up a Wireless Router