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How to turn the Intel Wireless on/off in Windows XP

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Most laptops issued by the Math Department are Acer Travelmates which usually have an Intel Wireless Network card installed.  Most of these laptops have a physical switch on the front or side edge of the laptop that can turn the wireless card on or off.  But by default, the wireless is turned on each time the laptop is turned on.  If you are always using the wireless network whenever the laptop is on, this is fine.  But there can be times you want to turn off the wireless and it stays off, even after rebooting.  So, here are some handy instructions to control the wireless card.

To turn on/off the Intel Wireless network card using the hardware switch
On most the the Acer Laptops there is a hardware switch located on the front of the laptop which has a little picture of a satellite dish next to a slider switch.   Other laptop manufacturers use either a slider switch or a simple on/off switch or sometimes there is a keyboard switch that usually requires using the Function (Fn) key and another key like F5.  The other key usually has a small icon to indicate wireless.

There is usually a light next to the switch which is off, blinking or on.  If it is blinking, then it is turned on, but not connected to any network.

With the slider switch, sliding it toggles the wireless card on or off.

If you use the hardware switch to turn on the wireless and it doesn't come on, then it's probably the software switch which is turned off.  Continue below.
To turn on/off the Intel Wireless network card using the software switch
1. Look for the Intel Wireless icon in the lower right corner.  It looks like waves going upward and has either white bands with a red X (off), yellow bands (on with no connection) or green bands (on with a connection). OffIcon  NoConnIcon  ConnIcon
2. Right-click on the Intel Wireless icon and a popup menu should appear.  If the wireless is turned off already, it should look like the picture to the left.  Notice the dot next to the WiFi Off.  If it were on, the dot would be to the left of the WiFi On. Popup1
3. Click on the WiFi On to turn it on and the popup menu will disappear.  Then the bands in the Intel Wireless icon should change to alternating yellow and white bands while it looks for wireless network that are broadcasting as available.  (For security, some wireless networks do not broadcast the name of the network, so only users who know the name of the network can join it. The name of the network is the SSID or Service set identifier.)  Once the list is found, but it is not joined/connected to the network, you should see the yellow band icon. NoConnIcon
4. To bring up the Intel WiFi Connection Utility, either double-click on the Intel Wireles icon or right-click on it to get the popup menu and choose Configure WiFi.

You should see the utility window with a list of available Wireless networks, which in the pictures shows the UHWireless network.



IntelUtil
5. At the bottom left of this utility window there is also a way to turn on or off the Intel Wireless network card. UtilOn
6. Notice near the top the text "WiFi networks found. Select one and click Connect".  Below that is the list where you can click on one of the networks and then click on the Connect button.  While it is trying to connect, it will look like the example picture. TryConn
7. The UHWireless network does not use encryption and does not require a password to join, so shortly after hitting the Connect button, you should be connected like in the picture.

For other networks that are secured, another popup window should appear asking you to provide either a WEP key, if the network is using WEP encryption or a passphrase or key for WPA or WPA2 encryption.  If the network name/SSID is not shown, like in the picture (<SSID not broadcast>), you should also be asked to type in the network name.
UtilConn
8. Once connected, the Intel Wireless icon should have green bands. IconConn

For more help with using the Intel ProSet/Wireless WiFi Connection Utility, check out the Intel site for a PDF download or get the PDF directly from here.

In the newer Windows 7 64-bit edition, the Intel Connection utility does not work, and therefore, these instuctions are useless.  See this page for help with Windows 7 wireless.

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Last revised: June 28, 2010 17:35