Airport Extreme and a decrepit PC

[dr.devious]

I am setting up an Airport Extreme in our house and all of our computers connect perfectly, except for my mother in law's who unfortunetly lives with us. She has an old Compaq Celeron tower with a Linksys 802.11b USB antenna. Her computer will see the AE but it will not connect. I just says that it cannot find the signal anymore and to rescan.

Is there a way to get her crappy setup to work with my new AE?

[Eidorian]

I have a feeling it's an encryption compatibility problem with either the hardware or OS.

[JediMeister]

Open up AirPort Utility, go to the Wireless tab. Option+click on the radio mode button and select b/g compatible. Set a 13 character WEP key, update the base station. All your Macs and the PC ought to be able to connect to the reconfigured network.

Note that this does drop the wireless security level from the more secure WPA to WEP, which, if you're particularly security-minded, could be hacked in about 5-10 minutes.