The wife and I share a BT Home Hub connection, registered and billed to me but used by her on
her own PC and iPad, also by visiting grandchildren for their devices. As most such devices, I assume, the Hub had three numbers, Wireless SSID, Wireless key and Admin password.
I use the service for my PC and an older model Kindle.
However, I bought my wife a current Kindle Paperwhite and have just spent two hours failing to make it connect to Wi-Fi. Using the Kindle's screen commands it accepts my SSID but then asks for what it calls a "password". I presumed this meant the Wireless key number but neither its number nor the Admin password are accepted. There is no indication of what other "password" there might be.
What could be wrong? Her PC was switched on at the time; could that have blocked access?
(I can't recall if mine was.)
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Is it set to a UK keyboard?
Our photocopiers at work are set to American keyboards (don't ask) and certain characters are different. eg, to type the character # (hash) you have to press shift+3 instead of the usual hash key. I think the @ key is also different.
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Easy to misread these things on a tiny label if it (stupidly) contains a zero or the letter O. Case sensitive as well, so it could be 0,o or O.
Possibility?
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 13 Oct 20 at 13:22
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Sorry to reply to my own, but occurred to me to late for the edit.
If your BT hub is only putting out 5Ghz, then the paperwhite isn't, I don't think, going to connect to it. It only works with the older 2.4GHz I believe.
I know my Virgin hub can (and does) have both options, and I've set it up with two SSIDs to allow some older devices to connect to the 2.4Ghz one. I imagine the BT hub can do the same if required.
That might be a red herring, but perhaps something to explore.
Edit - looks like the BT hub (in some versions anyway) does duel band by default, but they themselves say this can cause issues with some kit and you can separate the two frequencies out:
www.bt.com/help/broadband/fix-a-problem/broadband-and-wi-fi/i-can-t-connect/i-can-t-connect-devices-to-my-wi-fi/i-have-problems-connecting-5ghz-and-dual-band-devices-wirelessly
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 13 Oct 20 at 13:35
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It is a UK keyboard. There are no upper case letters in the Wireless key "password" and the KindleWhite's virtual keyboard only switches between lower case and numbers, with no uppercase letters on offer. Thanks for the lead, Crankcase.
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"KindleWhite's virtual keyboard only switches between lower case and numbers, with no uppercase letters on offer."
i think that you will find that there are indeed capital letters available. The up and down arrows act as a shift key.
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When it fails to connect what does it actually do? Does it say that the key is invalid or does it simply not connect?
Is there any chance that you have changed the key in the past? Do you have another wireless device you could try connecting A visitor's phone for example. To see if that also fails or in fact succeeds. It would help narrow down where the problem is.
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It says the "password" we enter is incorrect. As I said, I believe "password" refers to the Wireless key. (Wireless SSID, Wireless key and Admin passwords are as printed on the card supplied with the hub.)
I have not changed the key and it does not look as if it can be changed by the user. The other wireless devices we have, including my older-model Kindle, are not affected. I would not feel confident of involving a visitor's phone.
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I think you need to look for a basic error.
Perhaps your interpreting a 1 as an l or an 0 as an O
Or perhaps something is upper case, or there's a full stop, or perhaps the keyboard is not typing what you think (can you make the password visible as you type it).
Or something along those lines. It sounds like you're doing everything right so it's probably a silly detail.
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If you have a Windows PC connected to the wifi, try this to see what the password actually is. If it's the same as you think it is, look elsewhere. If it isn't, there's your problem.
support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4023501/windows-find-wireless-network-password
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>>If you have a Windows PC connected to the wifi....
Good thought.
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That's' a good plan!
Just to clarify the three elements you've mentioned:
Wireless SSID is the name of the default wireless network, and it is what you will see in your list of available networks to connect to
Wireless key is the password required to get onto the Wireless SSID above, and that is what you seem to be struggling with
Admin password is one which you could use from your PC to manage the setup of the BT device, and you could probably change the Wireless password (key) there if you wanted to, but you'd need to read the manual to see how to reach it. I expect you could also change the name of the network (SSID) and define which frequencies to use (2 and/or 5 GHz)
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Try connecting using WPS. Both the BT Hub and Paperwhite support WPS and you will not need to enter the encryption key (the password it is asking for).
I have an older Kindle and IIRC you just tap the network SSID you want to connect to and when it asks for the password it also gives you a "WPS" option. Tap WPS and then press the WPS button on your hub. You should then be connected after a few seconds.
Note: There is a timeout on the hub for WPS so make sure that you press the WPS button on the hub within one minute or so of tapping WPS on the Kindle.
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>>> Admin password is one which you could use from your PC to manage the setup
>> of the BT device, and you could probably change the Wireless password (key) there if
>> you wanted to, but you'd need to read the manual to see how to reach
>> it. I expect you could also change the name of the network (SSID) and define
>> which frequencies to use (2 and/or 5 GHz)
You can, and other stuff too. Hub light brightness, turn it off, etc.
www.bt.com/help/broadband/learn-about-broadband/learn-about-the-bt-hub-manager
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A message on the Kindle says that if the password route fails, try "manual setup" but with no explanation. What might manual setup entail?
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I'd say it's the method you are using - manually select the required network and enter the password.
The manual is here, look at the section headed Network connectivity. It also describes the WPS method which Kevin has detailed above.
s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/customerdocumentation/EM10/Kindle_User_Guide_en-GB.pdf
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Did you ever solve this, Ambo? We need closure!
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>>I'm still working on it
To no end. My wife called in a computer expert who sorted the Kindle on the phone Amazon. I did not see him personally but she said it took some time and seemed involved.
Many thanks to all for avenues to try.
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" it took some time and seemed involved."
Ahh that's one of the foundation courses in IT support. Make it look tricky and make it take a long time, even if it doesn't, and especially if on overtime or an hourly rate, or trying to justify an extortionate rate for an easy task and an end user is looking over your shoulder!! :-)
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Many moons ago the company I worked for sold rebadged versions of the CDC Storage Module Drive (SMD), an 80MB version and a 40MB version. Customers could buy the 40MB version and upgrade to the 80MB later, for many thousands of pounds.
The only difference between the two was that the 40MB version had a push-fit plug attached to the underside of the PCB cage that jumpered a few of the through-hole pins so that it only used alternate tracks on the platters. Changing from one to the other was a case of replacing the 40MB plug with one that said 80MB on the side. It took longer to spin the disk down and back up again than to change the plug.
Engineers got quite inventive trying to drag the job out to a couple of hours.
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Our engineers used to make a mint by doing "diagnostics" for a full weekend on a system which had failed. Usually to make sure that the new board they'd fitted had "seated properly". This was quite important but it always struck me as a bit of a liberty to charge so much extra at double time just to watch a screen (though they made it look much more difficult).
Towards the end of the product life we sold a Wang VS5000 which was a small v powerful machine. That had a souped up version which, like yours,m was removal of a jumper to free the real power of the CPU. It was many many thousands more expensive.
I sometimes feel that IT budgets must really be a fraction pf what they used to be but I suppose that not true. But we used to have a monopoly on support contracts on the massively expensive hardware for most of the product life and I can't imagine how you could spend that much money these days on anything equivalent.
As the VS range was nearing it's life end we laid off some very clever engineers and support people and some 3rd party support organisations evolved - but we hung onto the source code for the OS and products so they could massively undercut us on run-of-the-mill maintenance but at the end of the day couldn't do the whole job.
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Well at least you got there, so jolly good.
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Can't connect Kindle Paperwhite to Wi-Fi - VxFan
