well thats a little lie its there it just can't be used.

but a bit of history first. basically after 3-4 years of the same WinXp Home os it had become a bit sluggish and filled with crap one off software and when i finally got a couple of viruses i couldn't shake i decided to just do a clean install. having a WinXp MCE SP3 lying around i decided to install that so i wouldn't have do sit through days of updates. that all went fine (apart from wiping my MBR so i couldnt get at my linux partitions). having installed all the drivers i get the tray icon for wireless connections. but when i try to connect to my home network (havent tried any others but this network currently works with two other pc's and my ubuntu so its not broken) i cannot get past the ip address stage. dunno what to do, any hhelp appreiciated.

intel wireless card in a oem laptop from china.

dunno exactly what model the card is. i have never had this problem before and have done clean installations every now and then but always with Home Edition Cd so maybe it's the MCE disk but my other pc has no problem with it.

cheers

try resetting the router, it might work then, also i would find out what wireless card it is and see if they have any drivers for it out on the net.

SP3 is well-known for killing wireless connections.