Switching from Wired to Wireless - should be easy but completely stumped!

Hi people,

I have been trying to find a straighforward way of turning my wi-fi signal off when I don't need it.

By way of background my home set up is a reasonably powerful desktop which I use for most of my home computing requirements and a work laptop with a wireless network adaptor in it. The desktop is a wired connection (using the ethernet cable). I only use the laptop to log in to my office network remotely using a VPN connection.

I'd rather not be broadcasting a wi-fi signal unneccessarily (at weekends and at night etc) for security reasons etc. It seems sensible to turn on the wireless signal when I need it rather than have it on all the time.

I thought this would be straightforward but called sky support just to check. They confirmed that all I needed to do was to log into the router, go to wireless settings and disable wireless access point and broadcast SSID.

I did this and initially it was fine. no wireless signal but desktop working fine. When I came to use my work laptop, I logged in and reenabled these boxes. The wifi signal started broadcasting straightaway (i could tell this because the network was picked up on my PDA.

For some reason however, the work laptop could not recognise the signal and would not communicate with laptop. I thought problem must be at the router end because it was the first time I'd turned laptop on since disabling signal.

I called sky support and went through all the usual stuff (checking network key, SSID, checking network adaptors were working in device manager) but got nowhere. The problem was enventually resolved by the IT guy at work reconfiguring settings on the laptop (I think he simply did a system restore).

Surely there must be a way of disabling signal without it messing up laptop settings every time?

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,

Antony

As long as your have the SSID broadcast off, the password to log in to your router reset, and encryption on your wireless connection, you should be fine. If all that stuff has been done, theres no need to turn off your wireless access.

Borgslayer