virgin beginners help please

[behindthefrogs]

This is the problem with the current proposal to turn off the internet ISP connection of people who download films and music without paying for them.  If someone is taking a free ride on your wireless connection and uses it for illegal downloads then your connection might get turned off.

The rule is quite simple.  If you have a wireless connection make sure that it has a password set up.

David

[lesleyhannah]

Hi again

Think I should change my name to Dinosaur. I've taken the blue cable out of its envelope, and tried to follow Brian's instructions but I just feel like my head's filled with cotton wool as nothing seems to fit. Virgin's fitter fitted the router to my desktop. It has 3 wires coming out of it. A yellow one which goes into the back of my desktop PC, a blue one which goes into what I imagine is the modem, and a thin black one which seems to be plugged into the wall (but I can't see it because it's behind a cupboard). The blue one they've sent me seems identical to the one in the router. The fitting at each end is like the things at the end of telephone cables. Two identical fittings. I'll look up the webpage you suggest - maybe they have a picture which will at least show whether I've got the right sort of cable.

To make things worse the only writing I can see on the router is 'Netgear wireless router'. No model as far as I can see. The scenario of other people using my internet connection still baffles me, seeing as I can't even use it with my own laptop in the next room. It is worrying me though. Maybe the fitter put a password on it when he fitted it? How could I find this out? To be honest he said all sorts of things, most of which I forgot five minutes later - he didn't write anything down.

As I haven't seen any other messages on this topic I presume I'm the only one who can't cope with something as simple as using broadband - but I'm grateful for your help. Thank you.

[carol8353]

LesleyHannah

Do you not have a young member of the family who could help,or a teenage neighbour.This sort of thing will be second nature to them.

From another dinosaur 

Who luckily has a computer whizz kid son,but sadly he doesn't live at home anymore

[Calverley Lad]

Subject to confirmation by other Virgin users, you should have had an instruction leaflet supplied with router. (Just confirmed myself by ringing Virgin last 15minutes)
The router comes modified/setup for Virgin services.
Dial 151 from Virgin connected phone and tell them it doesn't work as it should.
(Select the option for Broadband Technical Support)
(Play dumb to get the engineer out and fix it)
All that should need to be done is set a password into router. (For security purposes)
 Regards Brian (Virgin user with router)

[falcybe]

You are getting there, lesleyhannah.

On my router the yellow cable does the same as on yours and connects the computer to the router.
The thin black wire goes through a transformer into the wall plug for the electricity to power it
I don't have a blue cable because my modem and router are in the same box.

While waiting for detailed instructions on what to do you could try and have a little look yourself at the router settings.

On my computer I type http://192.168.2.1/ into the address box at the top of internet explorer and hitting enter takes me to the router setup utility. I have heard that other routers use the same address code. It would be your modem you are looking at however, not someone elses.

At this stage I login without writing in a password, not needed to look at your settings.

Hopefully you will see amongst a lot of other information a line headed SSID. If there is a name or sequence of letters/numbers written beside that then you are looking at the name of your router. You can change this name of course.

If you do find your SSID, turn on your laptop and ask it to find a wireless connection. It should find one with that name. If it does then accept it and try to connect to the internet. If you have no password protection on the SSID then you should connect without any problem.

Back to the router, somewhere there should be a menu item with the word security. Click on that and you will be taken to a page where you can enter different key numbers. I have key1 set to my password.

If you see these different things then come out of the router web page (by clicking on the back arrow or closing the tab/page) without changing anything and report back here, saying what you have found.

see you later 

[lesleyhannah]

Thanks to everyone for your help. I printed out all the messages, and went through them but got into another mess - mainly because I had it in my head that I needed to put the blue cable into my laptop - which I know now was my stupidity. And I was getting panicky about other people using my wireless connection, so I just decided to leave the whole thing for a while till I calmed down. Then I rang the customer support again, and explained that the last technical expert I'd spoken to was obviously very clever, but just left me more confused than ever. So she connected me to another expert, also from the other side of the world, but who was very patient, and obviously handpicked to deal with Daft Grannies.

He talked me through it step by step, and we realised that some of the things RC-ers had suggested above had already been done by the man who came to the house to fit the broadband, which is why I was getting into such a mess. Unfortunately the fitter  hadn't bothered to tell me what he'd done - he'd set up a router name and password, which I don't remember him mentioning. What I needed to do was do some things on my laptop (but I can't remember now what they were because I was too busy following the instructions).

So now I can use my laptop in the living room, and the things you all told me about seeing other people's wireless router names come up now makes sense.

This whole process has been exhausting. I do hope they don't invent any more clever gadgets for a long long time!

Again, many thanks to everyone for all your help. I still think Virgin should provide a simple booklet to support their customers, some of whom probably don't have Rootschatters on hand to help.
Lesley