Virginmedia problems - they can't help, can you?!
I?ve recently switched from a telephone line based broadband supplier to virginmedia to be sure of decent download speeds (under the old system, the iPlayer stuttered all the time unless at midnight!). The Good is that the connection speed is excellent, no matter when I surf.
BUT, the Bad is twofold.
Firstly, I can?t completely set up the wireless network. My G5 iMac connects fine. My recent Macbook fine. My iPhone fine. But my wife?s G3 iMac ?bubble? won?t connect. It recognises that there is a wireless network, but asks for a password. When I type it in, it says that it?s the wrong one. But as it?s the same password I?ve used for the other three machines that can?t be right.
She runs 10.2.8 on it. I do not want to upgrade, as it suits her needs perfectly - email, views all attachments and can go to the sites she wants to visit. It used to connect to the network perfectly when I had the previous supplier. So what is different? The wireless router is a virgin branded netgear one. I have a feeling that WEP is somewhere in the mix????.but where I don?t know.
Speaking to virgin help desk I quote ?we don?t support 10.2 - we only support 10.4 upwards.
Anybody have any ideas?
The second issue is email. Despite setting Mail up exactly as requested, I cannot send email from my virginmedia.com address. I can receive email, though. When I click on connection doctor, the system tells me that I have connection to the smtp outgoing mailserver. Yet when I try and send, it asks for a password. Using the one for receiving (even though according to virgin I don?t need one) doesn?t help.
Again the virgin help desk was unable to help.
Anybody out there has an idea?
Cheers,
David
BUT, the Bad is twofold.
Firstly, I can?t completely set up the wireless network. My G5 iMac connects fine. My recent Macbook fine. My iPhone fine. But my wife?s G3 iMac ?bubble? won?t connect. It recognises that there is a wireless network, but asks for a password. When I type it in, it says that it?s the wrong one. But as it?s the same password I?ve used for the other three machines that can?t be right.
She runs 10.2.8 on it. I do not want to upgrade, as it suits her needs perfectly - email, views all attachments and can go to the sites she wants to visit. It used to connect to the network perfectly when I had the previous supplier. So what is different? The wireless router is a virgin branded netgear one. I have a feeling that WEP is somewhere in the mix????.but where I don?t know.
Speaking to virgin help desk I quote ?we don?t support 10.2 - we only support 10.4 upwards.
Anybody have any ideas?
The second issue is email. Despite setting Mail up exactly as requested, I cannot send email from my virginmedia.com address. I can receive email, though. When I click on connection doctor, the system tells me that I have connection to the smtp outgoing mailserver. Yet when I try and send, it asks for a password. Using the one for receiving (even though according to virgin I don?t need one) doesn?t help.
Again the virgin help desk was unable to help.
Anybody out there has an idea?
Cheers,
David
Comments
However I can tell you that I had no problems with starting with a G4 tower via ethernet (OS 9)
then adding Airport and:
G3 iBook (10.2)
G5 iMac (10.3)
Macbook (10.4)
All passwords the same.
I temporarily added a Dell... which required a bit of research and an long WEP password... but that worked eventually too.
Have you explored the help pages?
http://www.virginmedia.com/help/emai...ac-ten-two.php
But my wife?s G3 iMac ?bubble? won?t connect. It recognises that there is a wireless network, but asks for a password. When I type it in, it says that it?s the wrong one. But as it?s the same password I?ve used for the other three machines that can?t be right.
She runs 10.2.8 on it. I do not want to upgrade, as it suits her needs perfectly
Modern routers use WPA encryption, which is only supported on 10.3 and above:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2594?viewlocale=en_US
Some people believe that 10.4 and higher is slower on older machines, I can't remember if that's the case but 10.3 is faster than 10.2. I'd personally recommend 10.4 for that machine.
To avoid upgrading, if you go into the web interface of the router by using the router IP address listed in system prefs > network > TCP/IP, you can probably configure it to be WEP.
The second issue is email. Despite setting Mail up exactly as requested, I cannot send email from my virginmedia.com address. I can receive email, though. When I click on connection doctor, the system tells me that I have connection to the smtp outgoing mailserver. Yet when I try and send, it asks for a password. Using the one for receiving (even though according to virgin I don?t need one) doesn?t help.
Are you using the correct SMTP server settings provided by virgin? You can try:
smtp.ntlworld.com, smtp.blueyonder. co.uk or smtp.virgin.net
You can sometimes use external SMTP servers. You can for example use the GMail SMTP server if you have a GMail account.
you're a star!
Thanks a lot, the G3 is back up and running.
As for email - yes, I am giving up. I tried all the links, the settings are right, passwords OK. So to get her email working all I've done is set up a google email address, set it to be IMAP, and configured Mail to access it so from her point of view nothing really changes.
Once again, thanks so much for the help.
Cheers,
DAvid
the imap works fine on my macbook - but not on the G3.
Oh well, she'll just have to login directly to gmail.
Cheers,
David