Arrrg. Friend messed up my wireless network.

[smurfsgonewild]

Well, my neighbor in my dorm went in with me on a cable modem and he got a wireless router and some how he messed up my internet settings, I would have set it up but I had class. Now I can't connect to any wireless network what so ever. I can get the signal fine but when I check airport's settings it says i have no ip address or a self assigned ip and won't let me connect. And also, there's a VPN thing that showed up in network status window. I'm hard wired to the router and that's the only way I can get online. He was paranoid about people freeloading off of it and tried to make it "secure" but he just ending up securing me out of it.
So what I'm wondering is if there's a way to just reset all of the internet settings to default and just do it myself this time. If anybody can help me out I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[blodwyn]

He probably switched on WEP on the wireless router. If so, you have a couple of options

1) Wring your friend's neck until he gives you the ssid, channel, and WEP keys so you can access your wifi network

2) You don't say which wireless router you have, but there's a good chance it has some way of resetting it. This will usually restore factory defaults with WEP disabled.

Encryption is good thing, so don't leave it open for any longer than you have to

 

[Lacero]

He probably also turned off SSID wireless broadcast, so you can't see your network. He may have turned off wireless web access from the router menu. Could be any possible number of settings.

 

[smurfsgonewild]

Ahh, I knew I forgot something. It's a D-Link DI-524. He signed me in to the network and everything but there's another network in the dorm that's unprotected and it won't let me get a connection either. I'm gonna see if i can get in to another networks i can find. I would walk to the library but I might catch some disease that makes me wanna study *shivers* and we can't have that now. But there's no way that everything can be set to default without having to do a clean install of OSX that anybody knows of? I'm still a mac newbie so I'm pretty clueless when it comes to this stuff. Thanks for the help.

 

[blodwyn]

You shouldn't need to reinstall OS X.

Open System Preferences -> Network and set location to 'Automatic'

Make sure you've got your Airport turned on (I guess this is on being as you say you have signal strength)

Reset your DI-524 back to factory defaults - instructions here

You should now be able to connect to your router

Enable WEP - instructions here

Now you have to set up your Mac with the same WEP settings - there's a post here which describes how

Good luck