Newbie help re. Sky wireless router

[monkeez]

Hi i've just found this board and i hope you can help me.

Last night i installed my Sky broadband as the instructions.
When i tried it, I can get on the net if my laptop is connected via the ethernet cable - but when i unplug it i cant get back on.
The laptop finds my router "SKY*****" but i cant connect to it wirelessly.
I stumbled across a pop up box asking for the network key - but when in entered the key that came with the router a message came up saying that the key was wrong and had to be either 5 or 13 characters long (this one is about 8 i think).
It is WPA-PSK if that helps.
I'm a bit clueless at this sort of stuff so any advice would be sound.
This is a brand new laptop that hasn't had any other ISP on it.

cheers

[davefaz]

Yes, it is probably that you are just selecting the wrong encryption in your laptop. When that happens, the key is different you see, so it complains that you have entered a key that is the wrong size. I don't use the Sky router, so I can't tell you what it defaults to. No doubt plenty of other people on the forum will be able to tell you which settings you should use in the laptop.

[Koala5]

It is also possible that if your laptop is a few years old then it dosen't support WPA, I had that problem with my mates 3 year old IBM thinkpad, if so you can resolve by going into router menu via wired connection and switch sercurity to WEP.

[monkeez]

its a brand new laptop with vista on it
any ideas where to look to change the encryption?

[davefaz]

Unfortunately, it depends on the software your laptop is running as to how you change the encryption. Bascially it is the same place you entered the password.