WLAN not accepting password on some XP machines after new internet connection and new Router

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Doc.AElstein
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WLAN not accepting password on some XP machines after new internet connection and new Router

Post by Doc.AElstein »

Hello :)
My main house internet ( older copper cable telephone line from German Telekom) kept failing a few weeks ago. A nice lady from German Telekom on the phone tried to troubleshoot the problem for me, and finally used her charm to get me to give up trying to fix the problem and take out a new contract for a slightly better / faster internet connection with them instead.
I have got that system up and running, after a fashion , but it still has a few problems, including this one which is the subject of this Thread.

In case it might be relevant , this is what I had:
DSL 16.000 RAM IP ( The router was a 10 year old German Telekom Speedport W504V Typ A )
Download: Max. 16 MBit/s, Normal 9,5 MBit/s, Min. 6,304 MBit/s
Upload: Max. 2,4 MBit/s, Normal 1,5 MBit/s, Min. 0,704 MBit/s
And this is my new system
VDSL 50 ( The new router is a FRITZ!Box 7590 )
Download: Max. 50 MBit/s, Normal 47 MBit/s, Min. 27,9 MBit/s
Upload: Max. 10 MBit/s, Normal 9,4 MBit/s, Min. 2,7 MBit/s

The problem:
Some of my XP machines, stubbornly refuse to accept the WLAN password for the new FRITZ!Box 7590 Router, and chuck up this strange error
Image
That error message is
Das Netzwerkkennwort muss zwischen 40 Bit oder 104Bit, abhängig von der Netzwerkkonfiguration, sein.
Das Kennwort kann in der Form von 5 oder 13 ASCII-Zeichen oder 10 oder 26 Hexadezimalzeichen eingegeben werden
.

The translation is approximately
The network password must be between 40 bits or 104 bits, depending on the network configuration.
The password can be entered in the form of 5 or 13 ASCII characters, or 10 or 26 hexadecimal characters
.

The WLAN password number I am trying to give it is
29719228817028334572
That number works on some XP machines and all my Vista, Win7 and Win 10 machines.

( My old router is still turned on and connects successfully with all my XP machines ( it cannot give me internet because it does not work with the faster VDSL ), and it's password is accepted by all my XP machines. The number is
3716565511074969 )


( German Telekom are no use, I have had a few technical questions at their various help forums on them over the years and always ended up answering them myself. They think I am an expert, so they must be idiots! )


I expect I will sit down and look at this problem in detail next week, so I thought I would ask in advance if anyone here has any ideas for me to think about in the meantime, and/ or try out.
If all else fails I suppose I will compare all settings and software on the XP machines that have and don’t have this problem and see if I can track down the problem in that way. There is some info to be found in internet talking about WPA encryption things and similar which I don’t have a clue about, but I expect I might have to learn :(

Thanks
Alan
Last edited by Doc.AElstein on 12 Oct 2021, 12:59, edited 1 time in total.
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StuartR
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Re: WLAN not accepting password on some XP machines after new internet connection and new Router

Post by StuartR »

This may be caused by the new router using a more recent security type than the old one
For example you may have gone from WPA to WPA2, and some of your older devices may not support WPA2
A quick search for "Windows XP wpa2" suggests that you need at least Windows XP SP3 for this to work
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Doc.AElstein
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Re: WLAN not accepting password on some XP machines after new internet connection and new Router

Post by Doc.AElstein »

Thanks, my new router is showing WPA2 https://postimg.cc/K4bChKgY . I cant see what the old router is using , becuse it's not responding / talking to me as it should, which is why the Lady at Telekom gave up trying to trouble shoot with me.
( I have a seperate Forum Thread trying to tackle that problem of my old Router not talking to me as it should https://www.dsl-forum.de/threads/25111- ... -verbunden )
As I expected I will have to get to grips with and learn about all these WPA things,
and I will check which service packs I have when I start experimenting with my XP machines.
I might be able to try to change my new Router to the older WPA setting. But I won't try that just yet, as it took me a while to get the new router up and running, and I don't want to risk messing that up just yet. As far as I know it's got it's default settings just now.
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Re: WLAN not accepting password on some XP machines after new internet connection and new Router

Post by StuartR »

If you can get WPA2 working then it is much more secure than WPA. Depending on the threat level, someone who knows what they're doing can hack into a WPA network with a few hours of effort.
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Argus
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Re: WLAN not accepting password on some XP machines after new internet connection and new Router

Post by Argus »

(I think the older insecure WEP came with limited, fixed, key lengths.) The dialogue indicates 64-bit or 128-bit WEP, I think.

I believe XP didn't support wi-fi initially; WPA was added in service pack 2, and WPA2 in SP3. Anyhow, as Stuart said check the machines SP levels, and in addition the network settings. I agree it's best to use WPA2.

See this thread as well.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 0869329b65
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Re: WLAN not accepting password on some XP machines after new internet connection and new Router

Post by Doc.AElstein »

Thanks Stuart, thanks Argus.

I had a little play around and things are all making sense, - things are tying up with what you have said. Sure enough any XP machine at SP2 has the problem and all the others that are OK are at SP3
I am making myself a few notes as I go along,
But the shortened story is as you suggest, the earlier XPs don’t know about that WPA2 stuff
I had a little fiddle with security settings on my computers but that just seemed to mess things up so I left that all alone in the end.

I did find that I could easily change the settings of my new router from WPA2(CCMP) to WPA + WPA2 and then my older XPs were happy. All my other computers did not seem to care about that , - they were happy and never reacted to me changing the router settings back and forth between WPA + WPA2 and WPA2(CCMP)


There was a small subtlety. With the initial change of the router from WPA2(CCMP) to WPA + WPA2 , my old XPs still did not like the 20 digit number password. But all my computers, including the older XPs are happy to accept any number of <= 16 digits , and I can easily change the settings of the router to have any number I like between 8 and 20 digits long.
So the initial solution for me for now is, if i must have the WLAN working on my older XPs, then change these settings in the router:
_ password to anything with 8-16 digits
_ change the Router WLAN security thing from WPA2(CCMP) to WPA + WPA2
( But because of what you said about security, I will probably try mostly to be at WPA2(CCMP) and only do the change in that temporarily if i have to )
There is obviously a lot more to all this WLAN security stuff, and it probably would not take longer than about 9 years for me to learn it all, but for now I am happy to know what to do to get the WLAN in the new system on my older XPs. That’ll do for now.

I think I will leave a few of my older XPs as they are … you never know when they could be useful... ( – case in question – we all thought German Telekom had sabotaged all the old Speedport W504V routers with an update so that they could not be got at through the usual way via a Browser. – But I got into mine , but only with an older XP machine! – it seems that changes in Browsers since they wrote the router interface software, makes the software crap out if you try to get into it's settings and setting up softwareusing a modern browser, but an older browser still gets into it as oroginally intended!! :) )

Thanks again,
Alan

_._____________________

( By the way, I was not happy with a few things going on since I had the new internet system, but in the meantime, as a result of looking into this and a few related problems, I have learnt quite a bit about routers and related stuff, as well as me in the meantime buying very cheap some older routers to help me in these experiments.
So yesterday, I cancelled the new contract under the German law’s 14 day cooling off period, and am back now to my old system, but with a dozen older routers all working OK for me…. – as always, my personal preference is a few older working systems rather than being dependant on one newer one… - a rout’r f’ every comput’r – neat eh? :-) )

Some refs , mainly to help me keep the related problems co ordinated
https://www.dsl-forum.de/threads/25111- ... -verbunden ( Edit: Thread deleted by the senile demented grumpy old men running the place – solution copy here https://excelfox.com/forum/showthread.p ... #post15702 )

Figuring out how to run automated internet failure at German Telekom - https://telekomhilft.telekom.de/t5/Tele ... e#M1392788

Helping to prove that the Router was not the problem - https://telekomhilft.telekom.de/t5/Gera ... -p/5370149
Last edited by Doc.AElstein on 23 Oct 2021, 10:15, edited 8 times in total.
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StuartR
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Re: WLAN not accepting password on some XP machines after new internet connection and new Router

Post by StuartR »

What a lovely learning experience
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Doc.AElstein
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Re: WLAN not accepting password on some XP machines after new internet connection and new Router

Post by Doc.AElstein »

Forced on me by a continually craping out house internet line, and a German Telekom full of uncoordinated idiots, but I am trying to make the most of it..
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