Connect to the internet via wireless

This post is a guide is to teach you how to connect to the internet using wifi, and meant to be very basic and reasonable explanatory enough for people who are not familiar or new to using computers.

  1. Check if your wireless on your laptop is turned on. On the laptop, it is indicated by a LED indicator on your laptop, or icons with 3 partial parabolic waves in your system tray on your Windows desktop.If you are using a USB dongle or PCMCIA/Express card, make sure it is already installed and Windows can detect it.
  2. Check for wifi coverage. This can be done by locating a wifi sticker/logo or anything that mentions about wireless internet. All Starbucks have wifi coverage, but if you are not sure or the above steps are not possible, ask around wherever you are located, about wifi availability, whether be it another cafe, your office, or even a home.While asking, do remember to ask if there is any password key for connecting, and type it into your laptop while connecting.
  3. Once you have done that, double click on the Windows Wireless Network Connection icon located at the lower bottom right corner, in the system tray. This will bring up the Wireless Network Connection window and will display a list of available access points under the header of “Choose a wireless network”.”If you are not able to see the windows that allows you to do so, or an error message pops up. It may mean your wireless may be controlled by another software utility which most likely sits in the system tray. Look for it and follow similar steps to connect.
  4. Select the wireless network and double click on it to connect. It is at the point after this in which you will type the password as mentioned at the end of step 2.
  5. You are now connected to the wireless network once the notification appears. This just means you can connect to the wireless network at the location you are at.This in no way means you are connected to the Internet, although it is possible that you are most likely connected. This is because there are different wifi setup out there, so to assume that you are connected to the Internet at this point may be premature.
  6. Try surfing over to your usual Internet site. If you do not already have one, then go to or by typing it in your favourite Internet browser such as Mozilla Firefox or (!) Internet Explorer.
    You will know the Internet connection is working, once you are able to browse the Internet sites without any error messages such as “Server not found” or “Offline“, or your instant messengers start connecting (MSN, Skype, YM or GTalk) automatically.


ps: This guide is originally made for my parents, but is free for anyone to use and modify as long they adhere to the terms of the following license.:

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Malaysia License.

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