I just upgraded a friend's network/wireless system from a Netgear 802.11b router/USB wireless adapter to a Linksys WRT54G router and WUSB54G adapter. The wired side of things is fine, including the assignment of addresses via DHCP, but I had a heck of a time with the wireless side when using WPA security. In both cases, the computer being used is a Compaq Presario 960US laptop running WinXP sp1, attached via CAT5 when it's located in her home office, and via the USB wireless adapter when located in the kitchen (about 30 feet away from the router, through two walls).

Basically:
1) I set up the router, and confirmed the wired connection. Looked but didn't find any newer firmware releases for the router.
2) Turned on WPA security in the router, using PSK/TKIP, set the password (a string of 26 letters and numbers that makes sense to me, i.e. can be reconstructed from a memorable phrase).
3) Downloaded the latest version of the software from Linksys to control the adapter and installed it. MS Wireless Configuration service is turned off -- I can't stand its willingness to attached the first, easiest network it finds rather than the "preferred" network you've told it about.
4) Disconnected the CAT5 cable and plugged in the USB adapter, let Windows see the new hardware and finish setup.

Nothing. The adapter couldn't see the router. Triple checked that the passwords matched and attempted to connect again, pounded on things, swore, etc. and then went out to Google to look for an answer. My research unearthed a patch from Microsoft for pre-SP2 systems that enabled WinXP to handle WPA, so:

5) I downloaded the patch, installed it and...still no joy.
6) Uninstalled Linksys software, rebooted, reinstalled Linksys software. Tried again...no joy.
7) Poked around in the router settings (connected once again by CAT5 to the router) and discovered that I had changed the "Authentication Type" to "Shared Key" -- after all, that's what I was using with a WPA key (I thought). But the following line in the documentation struck me as perhaps significant -- With Shared Key authentication, the sender and recipient use a WEP key for authentication. I wasn't using WEP, so I decided to set this back to the default of "Auto".

Eureka! The adapter was now able to connect to the router. Well thank goodness for that. And it only took three or four hours...

Wait a minute, I can't load a webpage in the browser...any webpage. I can't log into the router administration pages. Cripes! After more poking and prodding, I discover that ZoneAlarm thinks the adapter is at an IP address beginning with 169.254.xxx.xxx and the subnet mask is 255.255.0.0 -- what the...fudge. Moving the laptop to the router so that the signal strength is "excellent" doesn't help the matter any. With WPA turned on, DHCP just isn't working with wireless. I even went so far as to try a WEP security connection, and it had no problem with DHCP.

I have gotten the WPA security connection working, but only after hard-coding IP/mask/gateway/DNS addresses in the Linksys connection software (profile). Of course, that created a new problem the next time I booted the computer -- it takes literally minutes for the system to finish starting Windows if the USB adapter is plugged in when the computer is turned on (although Task Manager shows the CPU being used 95%+ by the idle process). And then the network connection never quite gets going. Leaving it unplugged, the computer starts fine, and then plugging in the adapter works fine (quick establishment of network services).

The Question (and you thought I was just talking to keep the monsters from coming out of the darkened closet)
I'd like to know where I went wrong, and ideally be able to use DHCP with the wireless side of things. Has anyone else seen (and hopefully fixed) this?