WIFI died on laptop but works on phones and tablets ?

[BKKdreaming]

I have a 2 year old Dell  15 inch laptop ,  The Home WIFI worked  good on it in the morning but a few hours later it would not work , even when the control panel says CONNECTED......

 

But phones and tablets work OK off the same WIFI  as does an older laptop I dug out of the closet that had been sitting 2 years .....

 

Ummm so any idea what went wrong ?   The laptop was not moved, not dropped , nothing happened that I know ?????

 

Can a laptops WIFI card just die ?    I  restarted the driver but that did nothing ?

 

Any ideas  on what else I can check ?    Is there a modem checker program I can downloading from the working computer and  transfer it by USB card

 

Any ideas appreciated......Thanks

[cooked]

TOT messed about with our router  and we had problems but My iPhone and iPad now  work ok after going to devices - router in the control panel and clicking 'look for problems'.  Having a PC I was able to download 'OSToto' which is basically a shortcut for turning your PC into a wifi transmitter but I guess you can't do that? I have to use that for the Androids our family has.

[chrisinth]

Not sure which OS you are using, but you could try going into WiFi, 'forgetting' your current home connection and try connecting again by inserting the password when logging on. Also try changing DNS setting to (or from) say, google or openDNS servers. Also check your Control Panel\System\Device Manager to make sure there are no indications there.

 

Have you recently updated your system? Might be an idea to roll back on that.

 

Seems like the problem is with your laptop rather than the router if you have other devices connecting.

[Pib]

Try what chrisinth recommended above, but first you might want to try below if not tried already.

 

Alrhough your laptop may very be connected to the Wifi router you may not getting an IP address issued properly which means you are not reaching pass the router out into internet land.  You are indeed connection to the Wifi router...you just can't go pass it.  Try turning off your Wifi router for at least 15 seconds and then restart it and give it about a minute or two to fully reestablish a connection with your internet service provider.  Now see if your laptop's wifi connection fully works.

[tifino]

8 hours ago, cooked said:

TOT messed about with our router  and we had problems but My iPhone and iPad now  work ok after going to devices - router in the control panel and clicking 'look for problems'.  Having a PC I was able to download 'OSToto' which is basically a shortcut for turning your PC into a wifi transmitter but I guess you can't do that? I have to use that for the Androids our family has.

 

...down this path, this is what I did for us 12 months ago, whilst travelling around Europe.

We had at many times either a laptop, or an iPad etc that would not connect, at different random times.

I, in those cases had already downloaded another alternative, for creating my roving hotspot, as my particular connected everytime no problems.

Using  http://www.virtualwifirouter.com/   was quite successful;

 enabling one little laptop to serve all our devices (2 families in different rooms way, way down the corridors) simultaneously, password protected - even through those big thick walls of Italy's old Venicetown.

 

[dddave]

Any chance your laptop was purchased in the USA?  Certain WiFi channels (10-14?) are blocked on US origin computers as they are reserved for govt use.

When my router reassigned channels, it assigned one of the restricted ones and I had the same situation...all other mobile devices connected but US purchased HP laptop would not.

Took a while to figure out.  Go into your router admin and see what channel it's on.

[BKKdreaming]

Hi

 

thanks for your comments ,  using windows 7 

 

the weird thing was it was working in the morning and would not connect in the afternoon ,  sitting at the same place , same router etc, b phones / tablets connected fine , 

but it does say "CONNECTED"  in the control panel on the non connecting laptop ????/

 

How do I get to  router admin ?

 

and thanks for the virtual wifi links , I now remember those type programs  from years ago , that will really help for later.

 

and yes the laptop is a USA model BUT I am in the USA right now

 

again thanks for the advise and please add more things in case someone else searches this subject later

 

Cheers

[BKKdreaming]

UPDATE :    no progress yet 

 

I turned off the Router for 30 minutes

and I downloaded the WiFi driver from Dells website onto a USB stick and installed it on the the No-WiFi Dell laptop

 

but still does not connect , but says its CONNECTED  on the control panel.

 

and as a back-up I ordered another WiFi  internal modem off ebay 

 

Not that I need it today but can you connect 2 computers together by Cat 5 cable to get internet on the no-WiFi computer ?

[JaiMaai]

Have tried windows own repair tool yet?

 

Right click on the network icon and then select repair.

[JaiMaai]

Have tried windows own repair tool yet?

 

Right click on the network icon and then select repair.

[BKKdreaming]

Hi   UPDATE

 

well I got it working ,   used "system restore" , which put it back to the last "save" of about a month ago ,

can you change anything to make it save every 2 weeks ?

 

Anyway  it connects now ,   no idea what the original problem was , some conflict of programs maybe ????

 

thanks for all your help

[mtls2005]

This seems to be a common problem, with Windows 10 anyway. Seen it on many notebooks over the past few weeks, not sure if it's related to 1607?

 

I deleted the WLAN network adapter in Control Panel, System, Device Manager. Turned of, turned on, Windows re-installs the WLAN adapter, seems to work fine thereafter.

 

Assuming your router and internet are working fine, and you have WLAN on other devices (phone for example), this might work. Or it could be an IP address conflict where your router has handed out the same IP address to multiple devices.

 

Restart the router, which will flush the DHCP process, and new IP addresses will be handed out.

 

Take a look to see if you have a local IP address associated with the Dell (WLAN adapter); look at the DHCP table in the router to see if the IP address matches. Delete the WLAN network from the Dell's networking, turn it off/on, re-add your WLAN triple-checking any security pass-phrase.

[chrisinth]

9 hours ago, BKKdreaming said:

Hi   UPDATE

 

well I got it working ,   used "system restore" , which put it back to the last "save" of about a month ago ,

can you change anything to make it save every 2 weeks ?

 

Anyway  it connects now ,   no idea what the original problem was , some conflict of programs maybe ????

 

thanks for all your help

 

Sounds like an update problem of some sort. This seems to be occurring quite a lot recently, but as you are running W7, can't really blame the W10 1607 bag of worms for this.

 

(Yes, I've had bad experiences with this as well)

 

Glad to hear you got it back.

[BKKdreaming]

yeah , the only thing I can think of is ESET virus protector , it  Updates  around the time the WiFi stopped working

 

The Windows 10 deal is scary ,  not so bad if you have other devices that you can look at to figure out a fix , but what if that is the only Internet device in the house ,

 

Microsoft really pushed everyone into W 10 and they became crash test dummies !