SA -- Now that I'm more awake, here's some more detailed thoughts.

It's very likely you don't need the setup program at all. Power down and disconnect everything (power cords, cable modem cable and ethernet cables). Wait a minute and then reconnect and power up. Make sure you can connect with a wire before you try wireless. Open a browser window and see if you get anything. Try to connect to IP address 192.168.0.1. This should get you into the router's setup utility. From there, you can change the userid and password to the router and also set up the wireless network name and encryption.

Right. I guess I was assuming that SA could get in there. My bad.

Some computer geek I turn out to be.

Okay, pontificating on the world of acting in the Firefly thread, and then coming in here? Dissonence.

I'ma take some time and make breakfast before I do any more damage to myself.

Everything's connected, and my wireless card is picking it up and getting an IP; however, nothing is actually connecting. I can't get anything on the web to ping, and I've reset the router a couple times. There's nothing wrong with the internet service, and I can't get fucking linksys on the phone. My battery died waiting for someone to pick up. And the chat people are useless. Help?

If you figure it out, let me know because my sister and her roommate have been having the exact same problem. The roommate can connect through the router's ethernet port, but my sister (who has a laptop) can't. According to every diagnostic in the damned thing, she's connected, except she can't, you know, get to the internet. She's been through every help program on the internet, and has gotten more free geek advice than we have here, and nobody can figure out what's going on. (The consensus so far is "your router really sucks.")

The roommate can connect through the router's ethernet port, but my sister (who has a laptop) can't.

Has your sister tried pinging an internet IP address? Is the laptop getting IP addresses of DNS servers (and also, gateway IP address and netmask) from DHCP on the router?

Has your sister tried pinging an internet IP address?

I think so, yes. (And no dice.)

Is the laptop getting IP addresses of DNS servers (and also, gateway IP address and netmask) from DHCP on the router?

This, I don't know -- I live about an hour away, so I haven't been the main point of tech support for them.

My PC no longer recognises blank DVDs as such. It thinks they're blank CDs. This happened with my last DVDR drive, and I replaced it and burnt happily for a while. It can read DVDs (at least data ones) just fine.

What in hell would make this happen twice?

eta: The Powerbook recognises the same recordable DVDs just fine.

This happened to XP on a friend's PC twice. I think we had to wipe out any traces of settings and files and drivers from XP to get it to work. Including finding some obscure settings or other in the registry.

Unfortunately by the end of the process, we were too fried to document it all.

The second time it happened, he just bought a new DVD-RW-+ external drive and just gave up on the first one. Someday I'm going to get the first one from him and try it in another PC, just to see if it works.

Thanks for the advice, all of you; I wish I could use it, but I'm back at school now and won't be able to fool with it for awhile. Immediately after I posted that last message, I rebooted the DSL router--and then it stopped working too! I fought with it for another hour or so before giving up the ghost. I called this morning to Bell South--turns out there's a network outage in the town, which probably was the cause of all this foolishness. But I will definitely try your suggestions if that's not the problem.

DCJ, thanks for the input. Oy. I may try disconnecting/booting/reconnecting/booting to see if that fixes anything.

Not optimistic.

Pissed.

Unrelatedly: 1080p not worth it?

Also, I've had router setup problems that I was able to fix (or at least get the stupid thing to stop asking me for a password I didn't have) by doing a hard factory reset.

Just like many electronic gadgets, there should be a recessed button that you need to push and hold with a straightened paper clip or something in order to reset the router, but that's usually solved my "I DON'T HAVE A STINKIN' PASSWORD" problems.