Vista wireless internet problem

Hi All,


First post on here and not the world's greatest with computers so be gentle ;-)


Trying to get girlfriend's laptop to work on my wireless network. OR specifically, trying to get it to work again!

She has a Dell 1525 running Vista, and until a couple of weeks ago could connect to my linksys wireless network without problems and access the internet. For some reason (?what), its decided to spit the dummy out. The problem I've had is that for some reason the laptop will find the network and connect to it, but will not connect to the internet through it. I'm managing to run my laptop and an ancient desktop PC through the same router using wireless and ethernet connections without problems, was well as having a normal wireless connection through my palm TX, and my girlfriend's laptop will find and connect to other networks in the area.

Stuff I've tried so far:

Turning router on and off again - no change
Disabling and re-enabling the network card - no change
Connecting her laptop through the ethernet connection - as before, will find network but not connect to internet


I've ran all the diagnostics from dell and the only thing that's come up is that it failed the Gateway IP ping, and in the information box it says:


"The wireless router/AP for your network is either unavailable, not working or is disconnected. You will not be able to connect to the internet, although you might be able to connect to your local network. Contact your network administrator or wireless router/AP installer for assistance. Customer Support: www.support.dell.com"



We've not installed any new software, nor modified any of the wireless network settings before all this happened, though about a week prior I did have some problems with my IP and had to change some PPPoA settings on the router, but both laptops and the desktop worked fine after these changes were made.

Currently, whilst I can do everything normally on my laptop, on my girlfriends I can connect to the router but am unable to access the ADSL gateway setup to look at or change any settings. I can access these settings on my laptop and the desktop.

I've tried contacting dell in the UK, but its the weekend and the online help secton has apparently been down since 8th December and will be for approximately 2 weeks.


Any suggestions on a) what's happened and b) how to fix it?

Many thanks,


Pete