How to adjust network settings in Vista?

[rmendoza]

(NOTE: I am reposting this here since nobody in the Vista forum seemed to know the answer. Thanks everyone).

I work at a major national university. the school has several wireless networks, including a public one, but the fastest, safest, and more reliable one is reserved for faculty and students.
In XP Pro, in order to ad the connection, I just needed to adjust the windows zero config settings, to ad wpa2 authentication, AES encryption, and PEAP (and register my wireless card MAC).
However, in Vista I can't seem to be able to do this. I went to the computing services at this university, and they said it was Vista's problem, that the settings for zero config cannot be customized.

Is this true? Is there any way to adjust these settings?

[rmendoza]

Update.

I figured it out. But it was a pain in the neck, more so than with XP.

[jdhurst]

The person who wrote and published "Vista for Dummies" said the same thing and publicly reverted to XP Pro once the book was done. 'Nuf said ... JDH

[gt5l]

how did you do it I have the same problem with wep keys that are provided by the router

[rmendoza]

If I remember the sequence correctly, I first went to the "network and sharing center"; then, I clicked on "setup a connection or network"; then, "manually connect to a wireless network"; from there, it will ask you the network name, the security type, and the encryption type.

The problem for me arose when I could not go any further than this part. Vista assumed that I had a "security key/pass phrase", when in fact I didn't, since my network id and password were required, but at a later point in the process. The thing is, in XP you could do all in one step, by right-clicking on the "advanced settings" option while viewing all the wireless networks in range.

In any event, after you have manually "added" this incompletely-configured wireless network, you need to open "network and sharing center again". Then click on "manage wireless networks", and the one you just added should show up. Form there, right-click on it, go into "properties" and it will take you into the more complex side of the configuration (protected EAP, validation of server certificate - which could be Equifax, DSTCA, Entrust and a long etcetera, authentication method - EAP-MSCHAP v2 in my case- , and a few more choices (like whether you want to use the windows logon name automatically).

In the end I as happy, since I now have a super fast wireless connection, and quite secure. Nonetheless, it was a pain in the bottom to have to figure it out by myself, since the stooges in the computer lab immediately said it couldn't be done due to failures in Vista. I agree that it's certainly lengthier that the XP method, but I think they just had a knee-jerk reaction and blamed their incompetence (or laziness) on Microsoft. I am going to pay them a visit tomorrow, and see what they say about my setup.

I hope this helps others like me.

Now