Uni Wireless Network not working with desktop - no network address

[Samantha0101]

Hey,

I posted a question a couple of weeks ago but now after having seen an IT help guy (he came to my accommodation to see my desktop PC), speaking to an IT guy at university and e-mailing the network people (sent an email over a week ago - still no reply) I've still gotten nowhere. I'm assuming that it's not the fault of my wireless network adapter card as the internet did work one night 2 weeks ago for approx. an hour & a half. I overheard another student saying her desktop wasn't working and she lives in the same area as me, my flatmates have laptops and can connect. Whats the difference between a desktop PC connecting to wireless and a laptop connecting?
I was told to try using XSupplicant to connect to the internet, that didn't work either.

Here's part of the email I sent to the university network people:

I've been having problems with my internet since moving in on the 21st. On the Monday I installed the XP section of the disk provided by the university and then followed all of the instructions from the IT help page. I did everything as it said and it failed to connect. From then until Thursday the internet connected maybe 3 times, for the maximum of 15 minutes so last Friday I went down to the IT surgery help thing at the Grange and an IT man came up and looked at my desktop and installed the XSupplicant program from the disk used to install the XP file (uni internet disk), tried that and it didn't work either. He said that it's doing the complicated part (authenticating and things) but then it's not getting the values from the DHCP server (it gets to 'acquiring network address' and then comes up with 'Limited or No Connectivity' and the values assigned are like a 169. ... IP address. On Friday night at around...half 10 the internet connected for over an hour before going back to limited or no connectivity. The IT surgery man said to see if it works on Monday night and if not to get in touch with someone so I went up to IT help in the uni library and a man there said to change the proxy http to silvermoon.yorksj.ac.uk and the port number to 8080 and to tick some boxes, i did those and that didn't change anything. I'm currently using my friend's laptop and have checked her proxy settings and her proxy server address is wwwcache.yorksj.ac.uk and port number 3128 -- when I went to change mine to the silvermoon add. I previously had no proxy server address.

[computeruler]

so everyone in your whole area at the uni have no interenet at all?? this sounds like the school routers fault the difference of connecting a laptop or a desktop: nothing just that you can go places with the laptop and the desktop stays in one place

[thingie2]

What I would do, is find where IT support (or similar) is located at your university, then go personally and ask them, ask them if there are settings that have changed to access the internet. Also, is there a wired connection in your room? if there is, try using that to see if it's the settings you are using or if it's the wireless is the problem (best to do this before you go see the tech guys) Also, make sure you write down (unless you are 100% sure you can remember) all the internet setting you use to connect before you go and see them so you can tell them when they ask.

[Samantha0101]

If there was a wired connection I'd be using it.
Perhaps I didn't explain well enough, I have been to IT help, 3 times now and also mailed them well over a week ago. Yesterday I seen the IT help desk again and was told 'try these' (he gave me the instructions on how to go about checking all settings), i told him i'd done those multiple times already, his reply was 'try again'. Ugh. He also said they're too busy to reply to emails at the moment. I tried un-installing my network card and re-installing (last night), the internet then connected for around 15 minutes, disconnected, re-connected for a few minutes and then never came back on again.
And to the first reply, no it isn't all the computers in my area - as I said my flatmates (they live in my flat and also my friend who lives in the same building but further along) have connected their laptops to the internet.

Help appreciated.

[thingie2]

When you connected for that 15 mins, did you see what sort of signal strength it was?

[Samantha0101]

It was either excellent or very good.

[serverguy]

Well the problem is local then with your computer, if it connected when you reinstalled the drivers.

Have you tried seeing if there are any updated drivers available?

[Samantha0101]

I did uninstall and reinstall my network card the other day. It didn't bring up all of the protocols that were previously there but I assume that is because XSupplicant has disabled it?
And yep I've checked for an updated driver, there's not one.
After I re-installed it my internet worked for a while, and then disconnected again.