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PowerBook G4 won't connect to school WiFi

S

sucramdi

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 17, 2011
99
0
Quebec
Just a warning I know very little about networking stuff
I have a PowerBook G4, DDR2 high resolution model, that connects to wifi perfectly at home on a WPA2 encrypted network with no problems. Whenever I take the PowerBook to school it won't connect to any of the networks. When I turn on my powerbook it brings up a window asking which network I would like to connect to. When I select the one I want the little wheel spins for a bit then says connection time out. These networks are open and have no password.

If I try from the airport preference pane, by clicking the network from the drop down menu, it just goes back to saying select a network after a few seconds. The setup assistant was no help and the diagnostics asked me for a password for the network even though there isn't one.

Are there any settings I can mess around with to get it to work? :confused: My iPad and iPhone have no problem connecting to the network.
 
E

ed724

macrumors regular
Aug 1, 2009
227
1
Get as close to the transmitting source as you can and try again. Also check and see what sort of wireless routers they're using and see if there are any particular issues with that model and your mac OS/model. Other than that, only other thing I can think of is try replacing the wifi card in your machine.
 
spyguy10709

spyguy10709

macrumors 65816
Apr 5, 2010
1,007
659
One Infinite Loop, Cupertino CA
sucramdi said:
Just a warning I know very little about networking stuff
I have a PowerBook G4, DDR2 high resolution model, that connects to wifi perfectly at home on a WPA2 encrypted network with no problems. Whenever I take the PowerBook to school it won't connect to any of the networks. When I turn on my powerbook it brings up a window asking which network I would like to connect to. When I select the one I want the little wheel spins for a bit then says connection time out. These networks are open and have no password.

If I try from the airport preference pane, by clicking the network from the drop down menu, it just goes back to saying select a network after a few seconds. The setup assistant was no help and the diagnostics asked me for a password for the network even though there isn't one.

Are there any settings I can mess around with to get it to work? :confused: My iPad and iPhone have no problem connecting to the network.
Click to expand...

Try going to airport drop down > Join Other Network > type the SSID exactly, with no password/encryption.

That might just do it for ya.
 
S

sucramdi

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 17, 2011
99
0
Quebec
spyguy10709 said:
Try going to airport drop down > Join Other Network > type the SSID exactly, with no password/encryption.

That might just do it for ya.
Click to expand...

I thought so too, but it does the same thing as selecting it straight from the drop down menu :/
 
M

mike457

macrumors 6502
Sep 10, 2010
278
0
Ontario
It's worth visiting the IT people and asking them. They may well have done some weird trick. The people at my School were prone to that until we officially switched to Macs.
 
W

Wildy

macrumors 6502
Jan 25, 2011
323
1
Check to make sure you don't have any authentication going on. Education networks often make use of 802.1X authentication - a friend of mine couldn't get onto the network, turns out it was because it was trying to use the 802.1X details for her university back home and wouldn't let her on.
 
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