I work in an office that has multiple neighbors with WAP's set up and we have our own. Now whats weird is if I turn on the Antenna for the wireless nic I get every WAP out there but mine for a good 6+ minutes. It just doesnt show up in the available wireless networks.. But after waiting forever it eventually just pops in the list and at full reception.. It seems like when its first turned on its trying to log in to this other WAP thats not ours.. I have clicked and clicked disconnect on that to no avail. It seems like after its tried multiple times and finally gives up on that WAP is when it fines ours.. I know enough to set up my WAP but when it comes to troubleshooting stuff like this im a little lost.. I have sat there and clicked refresh many many times and it wont show up.. Now if i walk over to and stand in front of the WAP it will show up. but not until im RIGHT in front of it.. otherwise I have to wait the few minutes i mentioned before it will show up. but once i have it i have full reception. Anyone have any ideas how to get the wap to show up and not try connecting to this other one? Thanks!

Have you checked to see what channels the different networks are on? Without looking at anything, try setting yours to channel 1 and see if that helps.

Hmm the WAP is a HP J8130A Wireless Access Point 420.. Ok It is currently set to Auto Select Channel. So you want me to specify a channel?

Yeah. If you're using the same channel as a nearby network, you can get interference. There are like 14 channels, and only three of them don't overlap each other, 1, 6, and 11. 11 is the default for most devices, so try 1. If that doesn't help, try 6. If that doesn't help, come back.

Ok I ran a program called netStumbler and found the offending WAP was using the same channel as me (1) and there were others on channel 11 so I changed it to 6.. BUT i still am unable to connect to it.. After turning the nic off then on again and I run netstumbler it sees the channel and mac from the WAP but no SSID. Even after waiting it never gets the SSID now..

There is usually an option on the AP to enable and disable SSID broadcasting. You can disable it as a security feature, but that means you have to type it in manually on the client. Maybe you can look for that option. Or maybe you can try typing it in manually on the client.

Thank you for your help in this OK It turns out that only this one PC is affected by this issue.. I can go to others and they work fine.. even after changing to channel 6. its an HP Compaq nc4010 with a built in wireless nic... And as for manually entered SSID The SSID is entered and moved all the way up to the top of the prefered SSID list if thats what your refering too..

I don't know what a nc4010 is, but it is possible that you're running WPA encryption on the AP and that machine only know WEP? Thinking about it, that probably doesn't make sense, but I've already typed it in, so....