My wife’s computer had a hard drive crash and so I’ve been working to reinstall Windows XP. Her machine is connected to the home network via wireless link, and we’re using wireless security. Since the WEP “security” standard was broken when it was released and has only gotten more broken since then, we’re using WPA with preshared keys, or “WPA-PSK” in acronym-speak.

Configuring this has required a lot of exercise:

• WPA requires you to generate a random key. You can create a 64-digit hexadecimal key, or a “passphrase” of up to 63 characters (which will be converted to a 64-digit hex key behind the scenes). It turns out that my wife’s wireless card has drivers that won’t accept 64-digit hex keys. This is very strange, since we’ve been using such a key with that very wireless card for the last two years or so. But now I can no longer remember how to enter the key into the software, and the docs don’t help. Rather than spend hours googling around trying to rediscover what I knew two years ago, I decided to switch all our machines over to a 63-character passphrase.
• I generated a random passphrase and entered it into our SMC wireless router. SMC wins the award for thoughtfulness: after I typed in my 63 random characters, the SMC converted the phrase to a 64-character key and then printed out the key so that I could write it down. This turned out to be very important - bless you, SMC!
• Next I went to switch my MacBook to the new key. There was no obvious way to do this from the Internet Connect panel; it would simply try the old key over and over again, reporting failure each time. I needed to open up the Keychain and change the stored password there. I typed in the new 64-digit hex key (perhaps the 63-char passphrase would have worked, also, but I didn’t bother to figure that out.) The MacBook worked fine after that.
• Now to change the WPA password in my Slim Devices Squeezebox. This is always a pain, since the Squeezebox doesn’t provide you with an actual keyboard, just a remote with cellphone-style number keys to type your letters and characters.The following saga ensued:
  • Turned on the Squeezebox, which promptly failed to find the wireless network using the old key.
  • Tried to edit the wireless connnection. The Squeezebox promptly crashed.
  • Several dozen crashes later, I tried resetting the Squeezebox to factory settings (hold down Add while unplugging and replugging it). Then the Squeezebox allowed me to enter a new WPA key.
  • The Squeezebox wouldn’t accept 63-character passphrases. It limited the size of the phrase to something like 16 characters. Fortunately, typing a 64-digit hex key will work, although there is a catch - once you’ve typed in the first 63 digits, the Squeezebox whisks you away to the next screen before you can get the 64th digit in. It tries to log you in, and fails. To fix this you must hit the back button and go back to the password screen, where the Squeezebox will now allow you to type the elusive 64th digit.

  The Squeezebox firmware still needs a little work, I’m afraid.

• Finally, I entered the new key into my wife’s computer. Here I was required to use the 63-character passphrase, which eventually worked. Except that I had to type it into the network card driver, then (after resetting the machine) type it twice more into Windows’ own wireless-network control panel.