My son has a new laptop and we are having a little trouble enabling the wifi to my netgear router,i just cant locate the MAC address on the laptop

Sometimes the address is printed on a sticker on the base of units,nothing at all on this HP unit and i have looked all over the system to no avail.

Any clues would be appreciated

[Edited on 15/11/09 by bob]

start, then run and then type cmd to go to a command prompt, then type ipconfig /all and hit return the mac address will be shown next to the heading "Physical Address"

Cheers

Rich

Thanks richard

My only problem now is that i'm not holding a lot of hope for the mac address being 00:00:00:00:00:00

I'll check to make sure the wifi is actually enabled

Yes mate the card must be switched on/enabled, usualy either a button on the front or a function button held down whilst pressing one of the F keys along the top.

Cheers

Rich

[Edited on 15/11/09 by RichardK]

yes just checked and its all enabled but still reads physical address loads of zeros.

I've got to be up at 05:00 so i'm giving up and hitting the sack,thanks for the help richard.

IMO wireless is ahead of itself and is crepe.

PCs don't have mac addresses!

sorry. couldn't resist.


I assume as well as being enabled, you've check it's working? is it picking up any wireless networks at all?

Also, mac address changing apps are gettable, if you're really stuck.

sometimes the bottom of laptop will have sticker on it stating what the MAC address is.

try this

have a read. the last post suggests something to try

Disable MAC filtering on the router, once the laptop appears as a client on the router you may be able get the MAC address from the router's client list.

The laptop might have more than one "network" connection - some software appears on the network connections list in ipconfig - run it again, and look at all the entries - the wireless one should have a MAC address if it's working properly.

To make it easier to read, put this in instead:

ipconfig /all > c:networks.txt

It'll create the output into a text file on the c: drive called networks - you can open it in Notepad then...

HTH


Vince

Wireless routers are the work of the devil

after a long chat with my new friend from the land of netgear a firmware update has proven fruitless.

Up at 05.00hrs again tomorow so its bed for me and back on the phone tomorow night.

PS the laptop does access the net if hard wired so its the wireless adaptor within thats the problem,it finds my network but the network wont talk back.

I've added an i-pod touch to the network today no problems so its just the laptop.

Thanks for all the replies, i will update tomorow hopefully.

After a phone call to a relative who works in IT all is well, i managed to get the mac address (physical address) by hard wiring the laptop with the ethernet cable then following richards instructions.

Not sure why being online makes a difference but it did and all is well,thanks again to everyone for the replies.