CANT Log onto school network

Hey, i dont know much about networking so i need alot of help. I have a laptop with a wireless card, and I am trying to connect to my schools wireless network. All the desktops there have windows 2000, and you have to login with a username and password. I connect to the wireless network, but it dosent let my browse the web. I got an ip address from one of the desktops and changed the last two to default (255?) I don't know what I need in order to browse the web on my laptop. I have win xp. I found the right ip addresse (i think) the subnet mask and the default gateway, i found all this by running ip config on one of the desktops. I really need to get on the lan to finnish my groups project. What do i need to do in order to connect. My school has a major IT lab but I dont know much about whats in it. So any help would be nice-

Does the school have DHCP? If so, you can just set your network card to automatically obtain its addresses from a DHCP server. Otherwise, you must make sure that you have a valid Ip address. You must not have the same IP address as another computer, so perhaps you should check with someone who set the computers up as to which Ip address is not in use (perhaps try something like 192.168.0.254 or 10.0.0.254, depending on the school network). The default gateway, however, should be the same (probably 192.168.0.1) and the subnet is probably 255.255.255.0

Does the school use a domain or a workgroup. If it is a workgroup, make sure that your laptop has the same workgroup. If the school uses a domain, such as school.com, set the workgroup on the laptop to school. You can check these settings in System in the control panel.

Can you ping other computers in the network? Click Start, Run and type cmd. In the command prompt type "ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" (without quotes) and replace the xxx with the IP address of one of the desktops.

For wireless connections, don't you need and SSID - check that this is the same as used on the school wireless network.

On your laptop, try creating a new user account with exactly the same username and password as you use to connect to the school computers normally. Then logon to this account on your laptop and then try to access the Internet.

If the Internet still doesn't work, can you access a site such as http://216.239.59.104 ?

HTH,

Edwin

Its a config issue so talk to your IT administrator. These guys try to lock down the system from mischevious students/keep organisational policy.

-Are you allowed by policy to connect?

Yeah, the network has a domain, so im gonna set my workgroup to exactly what it says and the comps have detect network settings (ip) so im gonna mine it the same. I've logged on at my home school and all you really needed was the workgroup, weird how that works. Our it technitions are assholes and non of the teachers like them cuse their so uptight about the network. I really need to get some files on my comp for presentation day because my laptop is faster than the desktops to run autoCAD. Can the it techs see me on the network and log every action i do? I dont want it to seem like im hacking lol. If i log in as a user (i.e with my username and password on my comp) can they tell im on a laptop thats different from the win 2000 desktops? Thanks-

Not sure - but I would imagine that if you use the same username and password as you use to log on to the school network that it would appear to the IT technicians like you were using a desktop