need help making time capsule my wireless network

Hey MacForum,

I am a recent PC to Mac convert, and while I've found most things to be non-tech obtrusive, setting up this wireless system through my Time Capsule (TC) is confounding me.

My modem plugs into the TC and the TC into my macbook. When it's hardwired like this there's no problem. The internet works fine.

However, after many successive attempts to create a 'new wireless network' through Airport Utility with the TC leaves me w/ no wireless connection. My modem used to connect to a Netgear router with my PC but I took that out when I bought the TC so I figure I need to create a whole new network from scratch.

Here is what I've done.

I've followed the steps w/in Airport Utility:

I named my network and gave it a WPA/WPA2 password
I click share a single IP address using DHCP ... mainly b/c I don't understand what the 'bridge' one.
It says that choice will cause my TC to blink amber, I click ignore
Next option, I choose I connect with a DSL modem w/ a static IP address, again, not sure why but it seems like the default choice.
Next choice is to configure the IPv4 using DHCP or doing it manually, I choose the DHCP version.
I click continue and update.
It gives me the 'congratulations' page, my TC light is a solid green. But when I try to choose my network on my macbook sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not and when it is and I try to connect to it, is says 'connection timeout' error.

I feel like I don't know what to do. Any words of advice?

Thanks for any help,
Brian

 

thanks for the help.

i checked system prefs and it said i was connected with 'using DHCP' as my configuration. Both the ethernet and airport icons on the left were green.

I tried before signing in with PPPoE before but then it asks for all this sign in info and my modem doesn't have any sign-in info to make it work. It's plug-n-play.

I'm thinking about taking it to a mac genius to see if they can help ... is that something they could help with?