ACER aspire wifi problem

I bought an Acer Aspire 17'' laptop with Windows Vista at Christmas. I have Virgin Media at home, was given a Netgear router by them, installed their software, and my wifi connection at home works fine. When I take the laptop outside into a free wifi area, I have tried 2 pubs and Mac Donalds, when I try to connect it just won't.

I also took it to my friends house to try to connect to their wifi network. Again, no such luck. It finds local wifi computers in the area, I selected my friends one (with best signal strength) I put in the password to connect to their network and it won't connect. When I click on the link that says identify the problem, it says "the connection to xxxxxxxx was cancelled due to user action."
I also get this message when I try to connect to free wifi areas too.

When I look at the internet management utility console, it shows 4 connections that have been saved. The top one being the home Virgin Media connection I have stored. I had read somewhere that it is best to move the connection you want to the top of the list. What's interesting is when I move another connection up to the top of the list, about 2 seconds later, it automatically moves it back down the list, and the home Virgin Media connection is back at the top of the list.

I think this is the cause of my problems. It tries to connect to the wifi network I select, but then 2 seconds later it tries to connect back to my home wireless setting.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on and how I resolve this issue?
Thank you.

1. When you say it won't connect be more specific... Is it that you see your network but when you go to connect you're not getting prompted to enter your WEP/WPA key?
2. Are you able to enter your WEP/WPA key and then the connection fails?
3. Can you connect after entering your WEP/WPA key but you're not online/you don't have an IP address?

If you can it might be helpful to try connecting to another wireless access point. Sometimes if you live in an apartment building or theres other wireless routers in the area broadcasting on the same channel this will cause connection issues like this where you can't connect, or you can connect but you have high packet loss. So changing the channel through the admin configuration on the WAP can solve a lot of issues.

1) Login to Router Administrator, you need to open a command line and use usage as ipconfig and you will see as the following

C:\Documents and Settings\sin.le>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration


Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.102
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

Please open Internet Explorer with the address
http://Default Gateway ~ http://192.168.1.1

You need to know What is User name & Password to login, please configure "Access Restrictions" to allow access

I hope this is your case.

Hi,
Thanks for replying so quickly.

When I try to connect to free wifi in a e.g a pub, it finds the wifi name fine. When I click on the wifi name and click on the connect button, it doesn't ask me for a password (i'm told i don't need one) it shows a progress bar and then eventually shows a dialogue box saying failed to connect, and underneath it says connect to another network. It also has a message that says Click here to diagnose the problem. When i click to diagnose the problem it says " the connection to xxxxxxxx was cancelled due to user action."

When I try to connect to my friend's wifi at his house, again the computer finds the wifi name ok. I click on connect, and it shows a dialogue box with WEP selected and it says enter a password/paraphrase. I type in the correct password, it tries to connect and then says says failed to connect. When I click to diagnose the problem, again it says " the connection to xxxxxxxx was cancelled due to user action."

I think that's all I can give you. In the properties of my virgin media connection, i have disabled the check boxe that said "automatically sign on". I thought that would do it but it didn't.

Hi Jackson,
Thanks for replying. If you're asking me to reconfigure my friend's router, that's fine, however we already did this. The access restrictions did allow all access and other people can connect to his wifi fine. I don't think this is the issue. It's more, my computer being configured to connect to networks other than my home one which I think it keeps defaulting back to?
Thanks
Julia