Wireless router not detected

Earlier on today, my laptop just suddenly stopped being able to detect my router, my housemates can all still access it, but for some reason when I go to refresh network list, it finds next door's router, but not ours.

So i'm having to plug my laptop directly into the router, which is well inconvenient because it's in the hallway.

Any ideas why this could be? Seems really strange to me.

Cheers,
H.


Sorry if this should be in software, didn't really know which it fitted under.



EDIT: Forgot to add, my laptop is running Windows XP Professional SP2, and my router is a "3Com 3CRWDR100A-72"

Try unplug the router and or changing the broadcast channel

Are you using MAC address filtering? Maybe one of your housemates has locked you out

Just log into your neighbours router..it will save your own banwidth... :D

I don't really know much about mac address filtering, but here's what it says in the router setup:
http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j1.../macfilter.jpg

Is there anything I should change?

Although surely the problem's more likely to be on my computer because I'm the only one not able to find the router?

No, that's fine, it's disabled :)

OK, what about.... is there a maximum number of wireless connections or something? :blink:

No, I don't think so, because we've had about 7 wireless connections working fine on it before, and now there's only 4, +2 LAN connections.

Does anyone else think that this is really weird, everything seems to be set up fine, and i can find other wireless connections, but not my own.

H.

I think it's weird that you can't, but others can. :unsure:

It's like you're being blocked or something.

That's what I thought might be the case, but surely if I was blocked, I would be able to see the router in the list of available networks, but not be able to connect to it?

XP? try removing all registered wireless networks @ preferences.

Just tried that, it didn't work but good idea though.

After removing all the wireless networks, I also tried adding our router setting up manually by copying a housemates connection settings, that didn't work either.

Ok, I've fixed it.

For some reason, it was on channel 12, so I switched it to channel 11 and straight away could connect.

How did it get switched to channel 12?

I've no idea, we've always had it on channel 11, but I was going through all the different pages of settings, and noticed it was on channel 12.

But how was everyone else able to pick it up, do they have more advanced wireless connections than me or something?

In USA and Canada you are only permitted to use channels 1-11, but Europe allows channels 1-13 (and Japan allows channel 14 too).

If you have your location (for the wireless card) set to North America that would explain the difference. Alternatively your card may be restricted.