Wireless connecting (sort of), but no Internet - completely stumped!

Alright - I'm now to the point of hair-pulling and need a second opinion. I've recently added a wireless adapter to my desktop PC and to avoid drilling holes in the walls and running RJ-45. I was hoping this was going to be straight forward, but it's been anything but. I installed the hardware and driver and can see our home network on the "View Available Wireless Networks" screen. When I attempt to connect, all I get is "Waiting for the Network to Become Ready" - it says "Connecting" but never transitions to "Acquiring Network Address" or "Connected". However, if I boot the computer, it will say that I'm connected to the default network (our home), but Firefox comes up with "Server not Found."

Obviously something is wrong.

The network itself is operating properly. We have two laptops on it already that connect with no difficulty, and both laptops are able to connect to a neighbour's unsecured network in range. My desktop is also able to connect to the Internet with no problem if I wire it, but the wireless card refuses to connect - or it says it's connected and it's actually not, since the Internet doesn't work and the router isn't showing my desktop.

Steps I've already taken to resolve:

Wonky stuff went on when I tried to install it - Windows was detecting a couple of devices - one unknown, one multimedia controller, one ethernet controller. The ethernet controller might have been the one resident on the mobo - I never used it (it was kind of unstable) and used a PCI NIC instead. I disabled all of them, installed the wireless adapter, and updated the drivers for the wireless adapter. No result.

Ran ipconfig /all to pull info on the wireless. Nothing came up. When I say nothing, I mean I put in "ipconfig /all" and all that appeared was "Windows IP Configuration" with nothing underneath - no computer name, no DNS, nothing. Never seen that before. That happened when I had only the wireless adapter in - when I had both the wireless and NIC installed, the computer name came up normally.

Disabled WEP and attempted to connect. Nothing. Also tried to connect to said neighbour's unsecured network. Also nothing.

Checked the router and Internet connection. Router, modem, connection all working properly. Everything can connect properly, even my desktop through a wired NIC.

Ran Window's tremendously helpful Network Connection Wizard, which told me everything was working great. Also tried "Repair Connection" which told me there was an error. Really? Thanks! I didn't know!

So that's where I'm at. The problem has got to be with my wireless adapter or my settings for it. I've cloned the settings of the two laptops that work, to no avail. I haven't tried to disable DHCP and assign an IP manually, since the DHCP is working just fine for the two laptops.

The only thing I can come up with is it's either a problem with the settings, or it's a bum piece of hardware.

Anyone offer an opinion?

Hardware:

ISP: Bell Sympatico DSL
Modem: Speedstream (dunno anything more)
Router: D-Link DI-624
Wireless Adapter: D-Link WDA 2320

It appears that you know more than zero, but less than everything. Hard to determine what to tell you without appearing rude. So I will start at the beginning, not caring if that appears rude or not:

Network and Sharing Center ( icon on lower left of screen, right click )
__Manage Network Connections ( bottom of the list on the top left )
___Wireless Network Connection - right click
____Internet Connection Version 4 - The box is checked, right?
______________________________- double click left.

Obtain an IP Address automatically checked?

Don't worry about being rude. You can call my mother a walrus if you can solve the problem. That above sounds like Vista talk - I'm using XP and should have said that. I've got Obtain IP Address Automatically and Obtain DNS automatically checked under Network Properties, if that's the XP equivalent.

IPCONFIG /ALL shows the network resources on YOUR computer.

Next step, while in CMD.EXE:

arp -a

shows all IP addresses of things you are connected to. NETWORK resources.

arp -a and see what other IP addresses you can find. Ping everything. Sometimes my network devices don't show up. I ping them; get one bad ping and three good ones. Then they work fine. No idea why.

If you see a lot of weird stuff - 169.XXX, 224.XXX - that's just stuff for the transition to IPV6. Nothing to worry about.

Okay - used arp -a in CMD.exe and all I got was "No ARP Entries Found."

I tried pinging my router and it just says "Destination Host Unreachable."

Did both with a laptop and got entries as normal.

What really confounds me is that the Wireless Network Connection says it's connected - but only if I boot the computer and have the home network as an autoconnect. If I disconnect and attempt to re-connect, it refuses.



Thanks for your help, BTW.