Adventures with Zune Wireless Sync
Once upon a time a guy tried to sync his Zune 30 (with firmware version 2.2 (1040)) though his Linksys WRT54G (with DD-WRT micro flashed on it) to a Media Center PC running Windows Vista Ultimate (SP0)… This is his tale…
For security and performance reasons the WRT54G was set for G-only and set to use WPA2-TKIP. It is broadcasting is SSID, but that’s more for convenience than anything.
The guy connected the Zune to the pc via USB and established a partnership then went to the Wireless Sync Settings and tried to "automagically" find and configure the network sync. No go… no networks found…
That’s okay, this guy is somewhat knowledgeable about how networks work… so he went to the "advanced settings" to manually configure everything.
- SSID: keyed in
- WPA-TKIP: keyed in
- Settings saved: successfully
- Connection: failed
Crap! Maybe it was the WPA2… okay, let’s try setting the router to WPA-TKIP (rather than WPA2-TKIP).
- SSID: keyed in
- WPA-TKIP: keyed in
- Settings saved: successfully
- Connection: failed
Maybe it doesn’t like 802.11g, maybe it needs 802.11b… that’d suck, but let’s try; set the router to "mixed mode."
- SSID: keyed in
- WPA-TKIP: keyed in
- Settings saved: successfully
- Connection: failed
Crap! Maybe it doesn’t like WPA-TKIP… let’s try WPA-AES…
- SSID: keyed in
- WPA-AES: keyed in
- Settings saved: successfully
- Connection: failed
Well what’s going on?! Maybe it doesn’t like WPA at all, let’s try WEP…
- Automatic detection: succeeded!
- WEP Key: keyed in
- Settings saved: successfully
- Connection: succeeded!
So, he’s in mixed mode, broadcast SSID, WEP, but it works.
I talked with my friend here at work, he said he couldn’t get G-only to work either, nor could he get WPA2 to work, nor WPA-AES, but he did get WPA-TKIP working. I’ll recommend that to this other guy and report the results of his testing when I can.
If you’ve had similar experiences please comment!
Posted in Joe, music, technology, zune
December 3rd, 2007 at 05:34
Joe,
I had success with Just “G” (80211G) This weekend with an experiment I did.
Of course it worked with wep(128) and mac address authentication.
It found the network and did sync fine.
Also I am running windows xp sp3 not sure if the sp3 had anything to do with it.
Do you need vista sp1(beta)?
April 11th, 2008 at 23:10
You can add a virtual interface on your wireless as WPA2 Peronsal Mixed with just AES and that will work. I have some other gear that needed WPA Personal with TKIP+AES, so adding the additional virtual interface made a difference.
Oh, also I had to just enter the SSID/Enc/passphrase manually. Not sure why, but the network didn’t show up on browse.