I had to reinstall my OS (Windows XP) over the past few days. I have a new wired external hard drive, but I couldn't get it to connect through my router (Linksys WRT150N), it couldn't even be found. So I tried resetting my router with its reset button. Unfortunately I couldn't then get Windows to find it. Linksys makes a program called "LELA", but it couldn't find it (and thus couldn't set it up) either. I tried setting it up through its webpage, but couldn't really remember how I did it the first time. So I wasn't sure if there was just a lot of garbage on my computer screwing it up or what. I tried doing a Windows system restore. Now I know that the last time I had a similar problem, after fixing everything I made a Restore "Save Point". That was probably in 2006. But when I go to do the restore, all I can choose from is the past week or so. I couldn't go back to earlier points. So thats useless. I did the restore anyway, in case the problem was younger than that. But now Google Chrome wasn't working. I'd clicks its icon, it'd flash on for a split second and then disappear. Plus, when I tried running the command, 'ipconfig' from the windows "run" program, it'd do the same thing, whereas before I had been able to get that information (to configure the router). Plus my computer had been taking forever to start up for a while, yada yada yada, so I decided to reinstall windows. I did that with a CD I got when I first purchased the computer. When I bought the computer, the standard, default option was to not receive an OS cd. Which is nuts. I'm really glad that I noticed this and specifically requested the OS on cd; it wasn't even extra, but it has ended up being worth quite a bit of money. After doing this and still having problems getting the router to work, with both LELA and Windows network setup wizard failing to find the router, I finally got it to work. I remembered something pretty basic, I had to 'clone' my MAC address. Apparently my ISP, Cablevision, is one of many that does something with their system where your computer MAC address is their reference point, or their modem MAC address is the reference in their system, or some such setup where you've got to clone your networking card's MAC address, or "Physical Address" in order to get the router working. I had to get that information through the ipconfig/all command. Which, it turns out, isn't run directly from the 'run' window. First you have to open up a Command line, by typing 'cmd' into the 'run' program, which I had completely forgotten.
Eventually I was able to get things working, but only after being lucky enough to unplug and then replug the router once right in the middle of everything, which appparently did the magic trick.
Actually, after all that, I changed the router password, but must've screwed up typing it it because then I couldn't log into the router anymore, and I had to reset it again! Fortunately everything worked out quickly that time.
So now I have my computer hooked up to the wireless router. An external hard drive wired separately to the router, and an older external hard drive that is connected to my computer. It turns out too that I could actually (and I did this and it worked from my end at least) plug in my older external hard drive to the new external hard drive's usb port, and thus have two shared hard drives that I can access online from any computer. Whether I actually need any or will use any of this crap remains to be seen.
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