Happy New Year.
For a while I’ve used a USB Wi-Fi dongle to connect my main PC to the internet, unfortunately the one I currently use started going faulty a couple of months ago. What it did was overheat, disconnect itself from the PC, and then reconnect to the PC as an unidentified device. Every time this happened I had to unplug it, cool it, and plug it back in.
At first I could live with it, it was a minor annoyance that only occurred every so often, but in early December it got plain ridiculous, by taking less than 5 minutes before it overheated the first time and repeated the process 3 times in a couple of minutes. Well I sent it off to Belkin before Christmas and decided I’d use my computer offline while waiting for a replacement; this didn’t last long as the lack of an internet connection on my PC got very old, very fast.
Even though I could just use my laptop to use the internet, I would lose out on the better online gaming on my PC, the better performance it offers and many other internet based activities, so I was not going to sit around waiting for Belkin to get its arse in gear; I decided I’d get my PC on the net in some way or other.
At first, I brought my PC’s tower downstairs and put it in place of my mums PC, and connected it to the router with a wire. But once my mum started complaining that she couldn’t access her files on her normal PC, I decided I’d have to find an alternative way from upstairs.
In the end, I've managed to improvise a connection; I'm using my laptop as a bridge. The laptop is wirelessly connecting to the router as normal, and is also connected to the PC via Ethernet. I then bridged the wired and wireless connections on my laptop (meaning it acts as a link between the PC and the router). The first time I tried this, it didn't work, and I couldn't find out why; that was until mum came off a game she had been playing on the computer downstairs and found she had got an "IP conflict" error. I then knew what had caused the error; my PC had assigned itself the same IP as my Mum’s PC, but this was easily solved by manually setting the IP on my PC.
Everything then slotted into place, the PC connected and I was able to use it as normal.
The only disadvantages to this method are that the laptop must always be on when the PC wants to connect to the internet, and that the Wi-Fi receiver on my laptop isn't as good as the one in the dongle I sent off
But hey, it works, and it'll do until I get a replacement dongle back from Belkin.
Until Next Time
