Yesterday I purchased a new laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed. I have spent many hours trying to set up my new system, including a long telephone call to the PC manufacturers 'phone support to no avail, and could not get past the WiFi setup and consequently could not even register Windows. Finally, I discovered that there was no shared key option in the properties dialog, even though there is provision for WEP encryption and a field in which to enter a key??? I've waded through the various topics on this issue but have not found a solution, only admonitions not to use WEP. I understand that WEP is weak encryption compared to WPA, and eventually I will upgrade my other hardware, but that doesn't solve TODAY's problem. This is NOT a laptop hardware issue as I can connect if I set my access point to "open", but no security is certainly worse than weak security (and unacceptable to me).
If there is no solution, I must return my new computer to the store since the new laptop is but one of many devices on my network and a laptop without WiFi is useless to me. Please help!