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[Macscot]

Hey everybody. I'm trying to help my friend connect her Dell laptop to her roommate’s wireless router (on a Mac). Got LOTS of ideas to try from this site, but while I’m great with PC’s, I’ve never even USED a modern Mac, and I just can’t navigate through the OS without being able to see it (she moved to another country and I’m trying to do it via phone and net). And she doesn’t know Macs either.

I want to start by changing the router password to a 5 character password, then a 13 character one if that doesn’t work, then the $ sign stuff, then hexadecimal… … but I can’t even figure out where to go to change the router password on the Mac!!! Can somebody lead us there? Be specific since she doesn’t know the OS…. You know, like: System Preferences > Network > AirPort > Edit Location… etc… (couldn’t find it there, btw)

I also don’t even know what kind of router it is… there’s no name directly on it… is there any way to track down that info on a Mac? It would help immeasurably if I could look it up!

 

[bousozoku]

I believe it's in /Applications/Utilities/Airport Setup Assistant.

 

[thewhitehart]

Hmm... you can only use the Airport Admin Utility for apple wireless g products. Did you try accessing the router by using a local address like 192.162.0.1 or 10.0.1.1 in Safari? Many, if not most, routers come with their options on a built in web page following the local address scheme.

 

[Omni Geno]

Figuring out what router it is would be the first thing I would do. Are you sure there are no descriptive markings? Once you find out what router it is, you can look up (online) what "address" you connect to to access the router's settings. Unfortunately if you don't know the router's login and password you can't log in. If you do, however, you can easily get to the router's access password...

edit:

Hmm... you can only use the Airport Admin Utility for apple wireless g products. Did you try accessing the router by using a local address like 192.162.0.1 or 10.0.1.1 in Safari? Many, if not most, routers come with their options on a built in web page following the local address scheme.

That's what I'm referring to, if you know the login and password.

 

[Macscot]

Okay, so good news. She messaged me that she found an apple logo on the router, and found one at the apple store that looks like it: the AirPort Extreme Base Station with AirTunes. So, that IS wireless g by the looks of it, so hopefully it'll be easy to change the password. Next time we talk, maybe tonight, I'll tell her how to change it (thanks for the directions bousozoku) and see if it fixes the problem. I'll let you know.

 

[Macscot]

Oops, it's the AirPort Express, not Extreme, sorry. Oh, and her roommate's Mac IS connected to the router and working fine, so she's definitely got the login and password. I just want to change the password to 5 or 13 characters, cause that's often supposed to fix the prob, so that's the first thing I want to try... just didn't know where to go on a Mac to do it.

 

[mduser63]

If it's an Apple base station (which you said it is), she should be able to use the Airport Setup Assistant which is in her Applications->Utilities folder. She can easily access the Utilities folder by pressing command-shift-U while in the Finder.

 

[Macscot]

Hi team!
All set! She's connected and it's working fine. Just had to enter a 13 character password for the network. I realize now I was being a little vague here about what I wanted to change. Sorry. Just wanted to change the network password, not the router password. I forgot there was one for each.
Anyway, thanks a lot! One to put on my resume! Successfully troubleshooting a PC to Mac wireless connection over Messenger on an operating system I've never used before!