How to connect to a local wireless network in Windows 7

I'm writing this because I was asked for a "How to." So...here you go!

Using the Network Notification Area Icon

To connect to an available wireless network, click the Network icon in the notification area of your desktop. The resulting pane will give you a list of detected wireless networks and, for domain-joined computers, the names of wireless networks configured through Group Policy (see Figure 1)


Figure 1 The list of available networks will look something like this.

From this pane, you can connect to a listed wireless network by double-clicking it, clicking the network and then clicking Connect, or by right-clicking the network and clicking Connect.

Set up a connection or network dialog box:

You can access the Set Up a Connection or Network dialog box in Windows 7 (see Figure 2), by selecting the Set Up a New Connection or Network link in the Network and Sharing center.


Figure 2 The Set Up a Connection or Network dialog box.

To manually create a wireless network profile, click “Manually connect to a wireless network,” and then click Next. You should see Figure 3



Figure 3 

To enter information for the wireless network you want to add, configure the following:
Network name; Type the name of the wireless network.
Security type; Select the method used to authenticate a connection to the wireless network.
Encryption type: Select the method used to encrypt data sent over the wireless network. The choices depend on the selected security type.

When you select the — No authentication (Open) security type, None is selected for you.
When you select the — WEP security type, WEP is selected for you.
When you select the — 802.1x security type, WEP is selected for you.
When you select the — WPA2-Personal, WPA2-Enterprise, WPA-Personal, WPA-Enterprise security types, you can select AES or TKIP.

As before, the encryption choices listed depend on your wireless network adapter capabilities as reported to Windows.

Security Key: Type the WEP key (if you selected the WEP security type), the WPA preshared key (if you selected the WPA-Personal security type), or the WPA2 preshared key (if you selected the WPA2-Personal security type). For the WPA2-Enterprise, WPA-Enterprise, and 802.1x security types, Windows 7 automatically determines the security key when performing 802.1X-based authentication.

Hide characters: Specifies whether you want to view the value typed in Security Key.
Start this connection automatically: Specifies whether Windows 7 will automatically connect to this wireless network. If you clear this checkbox, you must manually connect to the wireless network from the list of networks available from the Network notification area icon.

Connect even if the network is not broadcasting:Specifies whether Windows should attempt to connect even if the wireless network is not broadcasting its name. This will cause Windows to send Probe Request frames to locate the wireless network. These probe request frames can be used by malicious users to determine the name of the non-broadcast network.

When you click Next, you should see Figure 4.

Figure 4 The Successfully added page.