Cannot connect to non-broadcast network

aln688

New Member
I'm having problems connecting to my non-broadcast wireless network. My wireless router uses non-broadcast of the SSID and also WPA2-Personal with a pre-shared key. In Vista I installed the drivers for my D-Link DWA-160 wireless key successfully. Then I setup the connection in Vista specifying the SSID and WPA2-Personal pre-shared key, also checking the box for connect to network even if it's not broadcasting.

Every single time I try to connect to my network, it fails telling me it was disconnected due to the "user"! I checked the router logs and the logs tell me MAC Address xxx connected, then was disconnected by the client. So Vista does connect but something is disconnecting it and giving me an error within Vista. I have all my drivers installed correctly, everything looks fine.

Any ideas?
 

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For the record, I got it working, here's how...

My hardware is a D-Link DIR-655 router and the D-Link DWA-160 USB wireless device. I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate x64.

I tried to setup a Wireless connection under windows (not D-Link's Wireless Connection Manager), every time I tried under Windows, it failed to connect. In fact when I watched it carefully, it connected then promptly disconnected for some reason. The router also told me this by looking at the logs. In addition, connecting to a local wireless unsecure network (not my own) also failed, and I know this local network does not use MAC address filtering.

Without going into too much detail, my router uses a hidden SSID with WPA2 Personal security of type AES encryption. Even although I set this up in Windows Vista correctly, added my D-Link DWA-160's MAC address to my router, it still failed to connect, every single time. As said, it would connect then disconnect promptly, almost as if something was terminating its connection.

The solution? Uninstall the D-Link drivers and the D-Link Wireless Connection Manager completely, reboot, then when Vista detects the WLAN USB device, simply point it to the "Vista x64" folder inside the D-Link drivers ZIP file, let it go through its process, reboot, re-add the connection under Windows, and it works. I think the D-Link Wireless Connection manager is somehow forcing the Wireless connection manager in Windows to stop working.

I did add the connection to the D-Link Connection Manager, tried to "Activate" it and nothing happened, I tried this a few times. I even disabled security on my router and made the SSID visible, that didn't work either. When the D-Link utility failed, I then tried the Windows connection manager, that failed too. As said, I think the D-Link manager is forcing Windows to terminate for some reason.

The solution seems to be, just point Vista to the drivers in the D-Link driver package, as opposed to installing the D-Link driver package, then add the connection and all seems fine. I hope Google catches this post, it may help other people.

Thank you.
 

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