WPA-PSK not supported

I bought an Aspire One 110 for my daughter at Christmas and so far I am desperately disappointed in it. It's primarily for Internet access but it doesn't support WPA-PSK which appears to be the predominant security protocol in home networks. I've tried the Live Update but it simply does not work; it tells me there are 18 updates but every attempt to retrieve them times out after 5 minutes or so.
My router (a popular Netgear model with the latest firmware) doesn't support WPA/WPA2, just WPA-PSK.
Is there any way to make this work without turning off the security on my network?

 

AAO's wireless adapter does support WPA-PSK.

 

Oh yes it does, been using it for 4 months.

Live Update works just fine too (it'll take serious ages when it's running first time.)

I think you need to dig deeper into your router documentation.

 

There are three options in the connection manager in my Acer Aspire out of the box. None of them is WPA-PSK. The options are no encryption, WEP and WPA/WPA2. None of these connect to my WPA-PSK configured router.
I do not need to dig further into the router's documentation as I have been through it all several times and updated the firmware and reviewed all the options there. It's a Netgear DG834.
Are you saying you ran the Live Update and then got PSK support or that it was there out of the box? If it's supported out of the box can you direct me to where I can turn it on?
If not can you tell me when you were able to get Live Update to work. I tried for four hours yesterday and it wasn't a matter of it taking too long, it tried for five minutes or so at a time and then returned an error. I understand that there have been some problems with Live Update so perhaps I can try again but I'd like to know if it is Live Update that is going to provide support for PSK.

 

Hi,

It all ran out the box for me. WPA-PSK to a Linksys router set to WPA-PSK. If yours is different then maybe try setting the router back to plain WPA so they match up?

I only actually got round to Live Update last week having finally managed to make a disk image of the One, just in case. It ran just fine, just took a while. So Live Update had nothing to do with me getting on the net in the first place, it just all worked. One thing I remember I had to do on the router was to switch SSID broadcast back ON, and leave it on. As long as your router is locked down in other ways this isn't a problem.

Cheers,
Rowantree

 

Thanks for your reply. My router doesn't support plain WPA, only WPA-PSK. With the Acer set to WPA/WPA2 it won't connect. If I turn the security off entirely then it will work so the other features of the router aren't an issue. Can you describe to me how you configured the Acer to use WPA-PSK? I can't find any mention of it in the user interface.
Perhaps there is some Unix configuration to make it available? I am a Windows software developer but I have very limited unix experience.

 

Hi,

I don't think I did anything special.

My router is using WPA-PSK so I left that well alone as it already talks to two Windows PCs WPA-PSK and then picked the closest thing to it on the One. I remember I had to re-enter the passphrase but only the once. I added the Acer's MAC address, using ifconfig to find it, to the router whitelist and that was it.

The thing that made it all work fine for me was the SSID stuff which a pal suggested as he'd had to do that to get Vista to play along but it's been absolutely fine since I did that.

Not sure what else to suggest. If you could borrow another router just to try it out that might help. If that then worked then it's your router, if that doesn't work then it's your Acer...?

 

I have a DG834G v4 using WPA/WPA2 and my AAO connects just fine out of the box. I have tried Linpus, Fedora 10, Ubuntu and Windows XP and there have been no issues with the Wireless LAN with any of these operating systems.

Do you have an access list enabled on your router - if so then try disabling this temporarily or even better make sure that your AAO MAC is added to the access list. Also try disabling the "Hide SSID" feature on your router.

 

So you configured the Acer to WPA/WPA2 and just entered the pass phrase defined for WPA-PSK on the Netgear?
I did try that but perhaps the access list was not correctly configured. I have successfully connected to the router with encryption turned off and so I now know nothing else is a problem. I will try WPA/WPA2 again tonight and will also double check the SSID broadcast (although I am virtually certain it's on).
Thanks

 

Probably not related to your connection problem, but there's a possible answer to your live update problem: http://macles.blogspot.com/2009/01/live ... blems.html (Edited to give correct url)

 

I have not found the need to explicitly configure the type of encryption used on a WLAN client device for a long time (many years ago on an iPAQ Pocket PC with 802.11b and WEP supported out of the box, WPA only enabled by a subsequent firmware update).

The client device usually recognises the type of passkey being requested by the router (WPA/2 or WEP) and prompts the user to supply the correct key.

 

See the following BLOG for live update problems as of Jan 4....

http://macles.blogspot.com/

 

Perhaps you meant to link to another thread. This one is about desktop icons

 

Duh, I suffer the curse of hasty posting: http://macles.blogspot.com/2009/01/live ... blems.html