Comments on: HOWTO: Configure wireless with 64-bit WEP on Mac OS X

By: Felis

Felis — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:26:44 +0000

Thank you so much!! i almost want to hit my ibook with a big hammer! you have save my little 4yrs-old ibook!

By: Brent

Brent — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:34:33 +0000

Wow! 2nd hit on my search, and this was the answer I needed. Thank you so much!

I won’t pretend to understand more than I do, so I’ll amplify that this is very un-Mac-like, and ask:

Uh, why isn’t there a plaintext passphrase option here? Since I use a plaintext passphrase to autogenerate the Keys, wouldn’t it make sense from a Mac to be able to take the plaintext passphrase?

Again, thanks for this post. You helped me solve a riddle!

By: JD

JD — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:11:16 +0000

Impressive. I spent 3 very frustrating hours last night trying to get WEP enabled once I truned it off for a minute to try something. That was so simple. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I could not find this bit of information in any of the official web sites I visited. Thanks.

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:46:35 +0000

Douglas, I wanted to quickly let you know that it actually did work (my original post from Dec 19th). It worked at the first time but then it did NOT work anymore. Since the Mac doesn’t give me any hint wether it’s a bad password or a bad signal I was in the dark. I thought all was entered correctly, as a matter of fact I saved the password in the keychain upon first successful connection. Here is a REALLY funny and almost strange workaround which I use now (hang on, it’s really unbelievable). — I have a Sony Clie UX50 that can connect to Wifi (BTW it does have a explainatory blurb to add that “0x” in the beginning if the password is hexadecimal) and the Clie always connected, just not my iBook (both devices about year 2003). Now when I connected with the Clie, the Mac auto-magically connected then. As if the Clie “helped” push the energy a bit forward or so. I don’t think it’s got to do with weak signals because this problem and the workaround was necessary even if just 1 meter away from the D-Link DI-524 wireless router.

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 01:14:48 +0000

…wired and wireless work great as long as one doesn’t care about security. Seems Apple has no idea on how to implement wireless security into Leopard? Talking to support is useless, the answer is always the same: “purchase a new/different router”. Dual-booting .. Vista runs great – no problems. Leo seems to be in the very early beta stages.

By: dom

dom — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 08:25:20 +0000

Have you got a cable connection, rather than one over telephone lines? If so, try connecting the macbook directly to the modem and see if you can get online then. If so, then thats a good start.
Then just try powering off the modem and leaving it off for about 10 mins, then plug the everything back in (router into modem/cable connection) and power back on.
See what that does. If nothing, let me know more details about whats connected to where
Good luck.

By: stormi

stormi — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:54:21 +0000

oy, i was very excited to see this posting until i tried it and it didn’t work! i have a qwest actiontec modem and a new macbook = the modem/network is not allowing the macbook in with any security, only when it is off – any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as ive spent days now troubleshooting/researching! cheers!

By: Joel

Joel — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 21:16:06 +0000

Thanks a million! Couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t connect but I’ll try this now, makes sense that it would. Doesn’t make sense that you’d need to tell it your using hex but there it is!

By: Sheri

Sheri — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 20:33:06 +0000

Good heavens. Thank you so much for posting this!

By: dom

dom — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:49:16 +0000

Martin, firstly, I would highly recommend an update to the Win98 network. Thats really not safe for use (unless you don’t have email or internet access). Even then its not great.
But regarding your WEP issue, if you’re using a 10 character passkey, then you should still need to input 0x or $ at the start of it.
The other option to look at is how is the network dishing out IP’s? Is each PC self assigned, either on the PC itself or on the router/switch. If so, then you’ll need to find out the IP range and assign a free IP.
I would hope that the router/switch will do some DHCP and assign IP’s though. Without an IP and a gateway address, you won’t be able to access any functions.
The WEP key must be set to key 1 but that is configured on the router. Have a word with your IT department about that.
If all else fails, perhaps look at the Airport Express. Plug a LAN cable into that, and set up a separate Wireless Access Point for your laptop, and use WPA encryption.

Try taking a network cable from a known working PC and sticking it in your Mac ethernet port. Look in System Preferences, Network, and look at the Ethernet details. If an IP is shown, then you are on the network, and you should be able to access the shared utilities, internet, etc. (If its 169.x.x.x then you have a problem)
If you get an IP that is 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x. or 172.x.x.x then you’re good to go.

Let me know how you get on.