I have an Apple Airport Express Router and Comcast Cable Modem. When
my roommates who have PCs with Windows ME ans XP on them, try to
connect to the network, it asks them for a "key"? What is this, how do
I find it, and how do I fix the system?

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Clarification of Question by scox-ga on 07 Apr 2005 08:09 PDT

That was helpful. I am not sure now how to put the 40 bit wep
encription in the correct format for third party users?

Generally, check out the Airport Support page from Apple --
http://www.apple.com/support/airport/

I've never used Airport with a PC, but by "key" it's probably asking
for the WEP key. WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy, according to
Apple. It's basically a form of encryption to protect your wireless
transmissions. You typically set a WEP key by using Airport Admin
Utility -- it should come on the CD that came with the Airport
Express.

Check out this document concerning password entry --
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106424 . Pay attention
especially to the part regarding Third-party client to AirPort.

Hopefully between those two sites you can find the answer to your
question. If you post a few more specifics, I may be able to help you
more.

I have an Airport Express.  Part of the configuration software you
have to install to setup the express is a utility called "Airport
Admin Utility".  Use this utility.  connect to the express. Under the
"AirPort" Tab and the "AirPort Network" Section there is a button
"Security..." from there you can set the password to connect to the
wireless network(don't confuse this with the password to login to the
express) when you go to set this password there is a check box to make
the password compatable with PCs.  for 128-bit encyption the password
has to be exactly 13 characters for the other I think it wants 7 or 9,
I don't remember.  does this help?