Five minutes after you log on to a Windows Vista-based computer, 802.1X network authentication times out, and authentication fails. Therefore, network connectivity is not established. You are not prompted to log on to a wired 802.1X network during the five-minute period after you log on.

On a Windows Vista-based computer, consider the following scenario:

• You use Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) together with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption to access wireless networks.
• A computer certificate is configured correctly on the computer.
• The computer has the correct permissions to access wireless networks.

In this scenario, you can see that a wireless network is available in the Connect to a network dialog box in the Network and Sharing Center. However, you cannot connect to the wireless network.

Ben at the Windows Vista Team Blog shows how easy it is to configure a Certified for Windows Vista network router. Once it’s setup, they show how to use a USB drive to copy the profile to configure another wireless device. It’s all so easy!

The Windows Experience Blog talks about the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows, and has a demo video showing how it can be used to control the games that come with Vista.

On a Windows Vista-based computer that is using an 802.11n wireless network adapter, you pause the pointer over the network connection in the Connect to a network dialog box. Then, you receive a message that resembles the following:

Radio Type: 802.11g

The message suggests that the computer is using an 802.11g wireless network adapter instead of an 802.11n wireless network adapter.

You are running Windows Vista on a mobile PC. When you open the Windows Mobility Center item in Control Panel, you notice that the Wireless Network tile is not displayed.

Vista’s new TCP/IP stack offers plenty of improvements, but unfortunately doesn’t always play well with older hardware that isn’t aware of the newer features it uses. Steve Riley on Security mentions that this can be a problem when trying to use wireless networking with a router that doesn’t understand the updated ‘Windows Tuning’ feature. He suggests this is more common with routers used for public internet connections, such as at a hotel. The fix is to disable autotuning, which happens to be the same fix from tip 25 which dealt with threaded network applications. Keep reading →

You have a USB-based wireless connection enabled on a computer that is running Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista. Even when there are five or more wireless network connections available, the Wireless Network Connection dialog box shows that there are a maximum of four wireless network connections available.

This problem occurs only when you use a USB-based wireless network adapter.

You may experience random connectivity issues when you connect a Windows Vista-based mobile PC to certain Wi-Fi “hot spots.” These connectivity issues include the following:

• The wireless network connection is dropped.
• You experience poor performance.

You experience these issues if the Windows Vista-based computer is running on battery power.

Note: You may also experience these issues when you connect a Windows Vista-based mobile PC to a wireless access point (AP) in a small office/home office (SOHO) environment or in an enterprise environment.

When you try to connect a Windows Vista-based computer to a Microsoft Broadband Networking Wireless Base Station MN-700 by using a wireless network connection, you cannot establish the connection successfully. In this scenario, if you enable wireless LAN tracing, the following error information is logged:

Driver disconnected while associating

You may experience this issue if the MN-700 device is configured to use only the 802.11g mode.

Note: You may also experience this issue if you try to connect to the MN-700 device from a Microsoft Windows XP-based computer that has certain driver and firmware combinations.

For more information about how to configure wireless local area network (LAN) tracing in Windows Vista, see the “More Information” section.