maybe nobody has a clue about what's happened to my formerly fine Internet connections. I have a related question, though, that someone might be able to address. I got a new monitor a very little time before things started going weird. In addition, the person who owns our small network used to have a connection without encryption or a password of any kind. She bought a new router and (without meaning to) set it up with all that. She shared the WPA password with me and with someone else. Both of them can get access to and use the network, but I can't. I know that one of them has a PC but don't know about the other, but I can't see what either the monitor or the router would have to do with any problem of this kind. On the other hand, there have been some little strange things happening with my computer (it goes to sleep unexpectedly and then won't wake, or I can't get the computer to come on without forcing it to shut down and then boot up again) since I got the monitor. Again, I've no idea what the monitor could do to disrupt anything. Or maybe it could.
By the way, the monitor can do either analog or digital, and I have the capacity to do either. I put it on VGA, because that's what I had with the old monitor, but maybe that's not the best thing. Again, I'm not informed enough to know. I just wondered, because when the computer is booted up or shut down, the monitor flashes "analog" alternating with "digital" before the desktop comes up or goes away. I am wondering whether it's doing something to mess up the smooth functioning of my G4, including the Internet connection. I thought that monitors were just vehicles for images, but maybe not.
I know this is all over the place, but so am I. If anyone can help to address these matters, I shall be embarrassingly grateful.
Jenny
Hi,
I don't know whether this is a problem with OS 10.4, but whatever it is, I hope you'll have some thoughts about how to solve my problem. My G4 (Sawtooth) desktop and I are enjoying the new monitor, but during the last two days, something really strange has affected my attempts to use the network that gets me broadband. To wit:
1. I can't always get the Mac to recognize that there is a broadband adaptor (couldn't get the right Airport card for my Mac) available to connect to the Internet?primarily, because such important thing as the IP number and other numbers have just diappeared. It even can happen when I seem to be connected to the network (my home page is on the screen), although there sometimes is an indication that I'm connected (I'm not) and sometimes, I've clearly never gotten that far or have been summarily disconnected. This all is happening many times a day. Sometimes, I can achieve a reinstatement of everything by various maneuvers such as doing little quasi-magical ? or so it seems to me ? thises and thats in the Network preferences or restarting the Mac or something else, but more often than that I just have to wait. At times a connection just comes forth on its own.
And sometimes the name of the device (called, I believe, a "dongle," though that has a kind of nasty sound about it) is arbitrarily changed! Sometimes it's just the number of what is in a parenthesis after the name that changes (en2 or 3 or 4, instead of 1), and sometimes, it's ((null)). I can rename it back to what it was, but that doesn't always last, even when I "lock" the little lock at the bottom of the page, to prevent unwanted changes.
And the signal is so weak that it takes what seems like days just to connect and then to load a page, only, often, to see the connection collapse. This has been a very reliable connection for quite some time now, so the sudden bewitching of the computer-Internet friendship is totally bewildering. Granted, I haven't entered specific "coordinates" pertaining to the network. Other options for connection to other broadband in my area are offered, but I choose the one to which I am entitled: a network owned by a neighbor with a small business for whom I also do work. That hasn't been a problem to this point. I've always been able to get a good connection and to enjoy the pleasures of broadband's speed without any fancy dances.
It is looking as though I may have to get my own cable-modem connection, but I thought I'd just put the matter before all of you irst, in case this has another solution. I really can't go on like this: I look a lot better with all my hair and nails intact, but even leaving that aside, I have to work, among other things, and that means having the Internet available. Having already given up my second line because I didn't need it with broadband, I'm not really in a good position to work on the Internet at hours when I might get a phone call.
Oh, and to top things off, when I do try dialup on my desktop computer (dialup on the laptop's fine, though there are some limitations because of it still using OS 9), I get a repeated message, after all the excitement of the connection process, "Authentication failed." My ISP doesn't know what to make of it, and neither do I.
Well, enough! Put on your thinking caps, if you will be so kind. I'm leaving my mother's computer (I'll check back, somehow, on my own, tomorrow) and going home to sleep, perchance to dream. Good old Will Shakespeare! He had the right thing to say in every situation, didn't he? And then there's Lewis Carroll, A. A. Milne. . . .
Thanks, all,
Jenny

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic