Technology Insights

Where Is The Wireless Switch On A HP Pavillion 6555b Laptop, HP Wireless Assistant: WLAN Disabled

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Earlier while working on a laptop that I rarely use because it is only required to access one of my clients networks the Wireless network interface stopped working. Initially I thought the Windows XP computer was in the process of crashing however I soon figured out that this was not the case. I started looking for the Wireless switch, which is typically used on modern laptops to turn the Wireless interface off and on, but I was unable to locate it initially. Below I describe how I eventually noticed that the Wireless switch had been disabled, where the WiFi switch is located, and how to turn the Wireless switch on a HP Pavillion 6555b back to the on position.

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How to install DD-WRT Firmware on a Asus RT-N16 Wireless Router

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I recently ordered one of the newer Asus routers just to stay up on the wifi world and I decided on the RT-N16. I normally like open-wrt firmware however its still listed as a work in progress for this router. This left me with 2 options, Tomato firmware and DD-WRT firmware. For the first run I decided on DD-WRT. Below I will outline the relatively simply steps to get up and running with dd-wrt on the n16

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Rooting the HTC Evo 4g part 8 (Enabling Wireless N)

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First of I would like to say that none of these hacks and files are my own work. This stuff was done by all the amazing phone developers over at XDA Developers. I am am simply writing a few posts on rooting the HTC Evo since most of the information was all spread out over the forums and I had a hard time gathering it all together in a organized manner.

The WiFi chip in the HTC Evo supports Wireless N technology, which allows for faster throughput on your WiFi connection. To use this you need a Wireless N capable AP or router.  For some reason HTC decided to disable the wireless n capability of this chip but this can be fixed. I am going to assume that the reason this was disabled was battery life but I am not really sure to be honest.  Anyway the hack used to be more complicated  but some of the nice folks over at XDA packages up a zip file which makes this hack a breeze.

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How to Capture a 4 way WPA handshake

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Trying to capture a 4-way TKIP handshake without help can involve sitting and watching traffic for hours and hours, waiting for a client to connect to a network. By using a tool called aircrack-ng we can forcefully deauthenticate a client who is connected to the network and force them to reconnect back up. During the process of re-exchanging the encrypted WPA key, you will capture a handshake. In order to forcefully capture a 4-way handshake, you will need to deauthenticate a client computer that is actively using services, forcing it to exchange the WPA key and in turn capturing the handshake that can be decrypted.