Unless you've seen the network before, you should never just automatically join a wireless wifi network, so that's curious behavior, to say the least. The problem? If your laptop automatically hops onto available networks without telling you, you could quickly find malicious folk sniffing at your data and possibly copying files off your system without you ever being aware of it. Not good. And also why spending some time battening down the proverbial hatches with your sharing and network setup is time very well spent.

What you want to do is have Windows 7 ask you whether to join a specific network, but it's not very good at that so what you need to learn instead -- as I detail herein -- is how to identify the various networks that might be within range and then pick and connect to the one you prefer. I like ones that have passwords, personally, as they're a bit more secure than those without, but as the proverb says, beggars can't always be choosers, so if you're in a café or library, an open, public wifi network might well be all they have available. No worries, Win7 knows how to deal with open networks, if you let it.

Let's start at the beginning. I'll show you how I got my Win7 Dell laptop to connection to my closed, password protected network, and also highlight what would be different if it were an open network.

Step one is always to look at the tiny wifi network status graphic on the lower right of the toolbar:

It's hard to interpret, but the little yellow sunburst means that it's not connected and something's wrong. Me, I'd have flames coming out of it, or the bars all flopping to a side, but I'm not a UI designer in Redmond, so...

To find out what wireless networks are available, simply click on the wifi icon.

It's too bad that here it doesn't show which are secured and which are not, but it's still accessible data. Simply move the cursor over the name of one of the wireless networks and you'll learn more about it:

The key item, of course, is "Security Type". In any case, Aerie is the network we seek to join, so let's click on it to do so...

Ah, you can see that there's a "Connect" button, but notice also that there's a "Connect automatically" checkbox that will let our laptop instantly connect online next time the network is detected. I like those for every network except wide-open public ones, like at the public library.

Click on "Connect" and if you were on a public, open network without a password, here's what you'd see:

Since our network does have a password and some wifi security, instead we'll be prompted for the network password:

Type it in, click "OK" and...

Connected! There ya go. Hope this helps out...