wireless domain logon

[raictman]

We have 70 acer asprie 3020 laptops and they will not logon to a domain wirelessly they will logon locally and start the wireless service and then logoff and logon to the domain this is not a feasible solution, has anyone come across this problem and maybe have a solution as we have had these laptops for 6 months and 60 are still in storage and slt are not happy

[Dos_Box]

By default, the wireless service won't startup until a user logs on. There is another topic already covering this, but I can't find it at the moment :/

[raictman]

cheers, oh dear well thats 70 doorstops and paper weights then unless there are any other solutions

[Netman]

In a nutshell... you need to let Windows manage the wireless connection (and tell it to connect automatically), not any third party software and also assign a static IP to the laptops. That should do the trick...

[ajbritton]

I have never had this problem on XP laptops, BUT, I do set a group policy which forces the clients to 'wait for network at startup' (or something like that).

 

Policy setting...

 

"Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon\Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon"

 

Set to Enabled

 

I would also 2nd Netman about allowing Windows to do all the config and management.

[plexer]

We have around 60 wireless enabled laptops and I've never set anything special on them to allow for a domain log on via the wireless but I do let windows zero config look after it so maybe that is why.

 

If you are looking at radius authentication then thats a different problem.

 

Ben

[GrumbleDook]

Some manufacturers do have utilities to force the machine to wake up the wireless connection and check it before trying to authenticate.

 

Dell do one for some of their chipsets, I am sure that acer do too ... I would actually speak to an Acer reseller (Teksys, XMA, etc) for help as they are likely to be quicker than getting an answer from Acer ... failing that use the US help site, I always got a quick response from them (even if it was "no, it just doesn't work that way").

[ajbritton]

There's even hope for 802.1x. Have a look at Mike Mullins' posts.

[apeo]

We use windows to Automatically connect and for the most part it works well but on occation we get a problem with laptops not being able to log on or logon then lose network connectivity whilst logged on. Having looked into it we found that for some reason the laptop(s) will choose to connect to an access point that is further away, anyone encountered this before?

[Norphy]

In a nutshell... you need to let Windows manage the wireless connection (and tell it to connect automatically), not any third party software and also assign a static IP to the laptops. That should do the trick...

 

Netman is right although assigning a static IP is perhaps going a bit far.

 

I had the exact same problem with a batch of Centrino based Dells a couple of years back. It took about a week of banging my head against the wall to figure it out but I found the best thing to do was to get rid of Intel Proset and let Windows ZCW do the work. Once that piece of crap Proset was removed it did the trick.

[Guest]

Agree with tha above. Dump any card specific utilites and use the Wireless Zero Configuration service to manage the card.

[alan-d]

Just out of interest have you looked at Network Connections -> Advanced -> Advanced Settings?

 

Ensure that the wireless connection is listed first.

[raictman]

thank you for all the replys but none of it has worked yet the wireless radio dosn't start till logged on no little orange flashing light (technical phrase)

[apeo]

When you said you have to start the wireless service, does that mean you have to bring up the available networks and choose the one you want and connect?

 

When you type in ipconfig when you first login locally what is the ip address?

[raictman]

no when i log in locally the wireless starts and connects automatically but it dosnt start before logon when i need it to, to logon to a domain

[OverWorked]

Agree with what everyone above has said about not using the maker's utility, but allow windows to do it.

 

I had the same problem with some Belkin wireless cards. My preferred way of installing wifi cards is to install the card drivers without the utility. There's no way of installing the driver without the utility for the Belkins, but the utility does allow you to switch it off and allow windows to manage the connection.

 

Try logging on to a laptop as local admin then disabling the card's utility. It may take a while before it hands over control to windows. See if that allows you to restart the machine and log on to the domain. You may have to then use the windows utility to connect to the wireless network.

 

(Someone mentioned DHCP. That will be a different problem. The only way I got round that with a 3com card was to allow it to act as a DHCP server with its own range).

[m25man]

Only just noticed this post but for the benefit of others I thought I would add a couple of relevant points.

 

Acer, I had a couple of awful experiences with the BIOS. On one model they actually went away and re-wrote it for us!

 

The BIOS would not enable the wifi and until the OS had booted and logged in locally the wifi would not work - what a pain. The BIOS update fixed it.

 

Also the Acer soft key utiliy, if you rebuild your Acer images yourself ensure you include this OEM utility as the additional keys (INCLUDING THE WiFi buton) do not work unless this is loaded on startup.

 

After that use XP SP2 with the WPA/WPA2 patch and at worse a user will need to enter the pre-shared key to use the WiFi

 

GeoffH