Weird WiFi problem

[MikeSh]

We've just changed phone & broadband supplier and thus got a new router (Fritz!Box 3490).
Got it up and working, got the wlan up, connected phones and tablet ... all fine.
Later on got round to the Humax boxes.
Freesat 1010, no problem with the built in WiFi.
Then the two HDR-FOX boxes which of course have WiFi dongles in the back USB ports. The dongles are slightly different models but have been working fine for a few years with two different routers/networks. So I go into the first, find the network, enter password, connects with no problem.
Onto the second one .... can't see the network. It can see the neighbour's network, in fact about four of them, but not the one right in it's face.
So I try manually entering the name - no, not interested.
The network name had a space and a ! in it so I changed that to remove those in case this dongle was funny about that - still sees the neighbour's but not ours.

So now I'm stumped. The dongle is a bit buried, so before I dig it out to get the model, etc (I think they are both some kind of Edimax) has anyone seen this kind of behaviour before? And is there a simple solution.

 

[prpr]

I don't see why changing the router should cause you to have to reconfigure your devices, so long as you use the same SSID and WPA2 pre-shared key.
Wireless can be a bit funky on some dongles if you choose the "wrong" channel, but if you make sure it's the same as you had before it should just work!
Or have you got one of those that does auto-channel hopping? There seem to be several round me as I've had big problems with interference, but
it's very hard to keep tabs on the damned things as they're always changing.

 

[MikeSh]

I don't see why changing the router should cause you to have to reconfigure your devices, so long as you use the same SSID and WPA2 pre-shared key.
Wireless can be a bit funky on some dongles if you choose the "wrong" channel, but if you make sure it's the same as you had before it should just work!

Well, if I'd thought, then yes I could have done that, but I'd have had to use the "BT" router name, which wouldn't have felt right.

Or have you got one of those that does auto-channel hopping? There seem to be several round me as I've had big problems with interference, but
it's very hard to keep tabs on the damned things as they're always changing.

But YOU IS DA MAN !!
I had already taken it off it's auto mode as it was still sharing a channel with neighbouring lans. 1, 6 &11 are in use, so I'd put ours on 3. On the basis of what you said I went in and moved it up to 8, and b****r me it's working.
That's the strangest thing I've seen for a while, especially as I think the old router was on 3.

 

[prpr]

Wireless networking is even more of a black art than normal RF, and that can be bad enough at times.