Strange wireless network behavior


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My daughters laptop (HP) has suddenly decided that it will not browse the internet over the WIFI. Windows shows that it is connected and has 5 bars (since the router is >20 feet away) but my wife indicated that this issue has happened once before when she was traveling, but once she go it here it worked just fine. I have done virus scans and all of that on it, and this just happened this afternoon sometime, because I know that she was able to get online this morning. I have reset the router and modem, and the other laptop and the android phone are all able to use the wifi, just not the HP! Any ideas what to do? I know that HP has a proprietary program called HP Connection Manager, but I have disabled it, and been able to browse just fine.

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wireless driver acting up maybe?

try getting the driver from HP's website then uninstalling the current one and installing the one you just downloaded

(worth a try at least) but it definitely seems like it's a problem with the laptop itself and not your router or anything

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Step 1 in troubleshooting any network related problem - do you have an IP! Can you ping the gateway? Then we can work on why you can't get off said network or why you can not resolve where to go, etc.

Connected to wifi doesn't mean it has an IP, doesn't mean its even your wifi network, etc.

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@Budman, I am able to ping the gateway, and able to ping google, etc. It is attached to the our network (router status shows it), and I am able to browse shared location via my desktop.

@Shane Nokes, I forgot that I have manually set the IP and DNS on that laptop.

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1. Does the laptop have an IP address? Open up the command prompt and type ipconfig. Look at the section called "Wireless LAN Adapter Wireless Network Connection"

2. Can you access web sites by typing their IP addresses instead? Example, in command prompt (on a working laptop) type ping google.com and get its IP address. Then go to the non-working laptop and do the same, can you ping google.com? If so, enter its IP address in a web browser and press enter so instead of typing google.com, type its IP address.

Does it work that way?

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@Budman, I am able to ping the gateway, and able to ping google, etc. It is attached to the our network (router status shows it), and I am able to browse shared location via my desktop.

@Shane Nokes, I forgot that I have manually set the IP and DNS on that laptop.

With Manual IP & DNS sometimes things go a little wonky if you have it set to a specific DNS provider that is having issues.

Have you tried changing those settings to DHCP and seeing if the auto-assigned address works correctly?

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Have not attempted to change to auto, but upon rebooting the laptop Internet Connectivity is back :/

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Have not attempted to change to auto, but upon rebooting the laptop Internet Connectivity is back :/

Hmm could be a driver issue, or an issue with the wireless. Does the laptop have a bay where you can swap out the wireless card if it goes bad? I know my old Dell laptop had one, and it was nice. It was an internal card, but there was an external part of the case that could be unscrewed to replace it with a new one from Dell, if need be.

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Not sure if it has swappable wireless, never really looked at it. But I am going to play around with it this weekend and see if uninstalling the driver and reinstalling it makes it work any better.

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Thought you said it was working, how is uninstalling the driver and installing the same driver going to make it work "better" ?? Its working - what else is it suppose to do, play dixie while it works?

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Did you put your SSID on the other thread if so Budman might be sitting outside playing with your wifi lol

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Thought you said it was working, how is uninstalling the driver and installing the same driver going to make it work "better" ?? Its working - what else is it suppose to do, play dixie while it works?

He noted that it has done this before. I think this is an attempt to see if it's an issue with how the driver installed. Sometimes uninstalling something & reinstalling it can work if it's a case where the prior install went a little goofy.

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Its a laptop - did it just come out of standby or hibernate? Why was it not restarted before starting a thread? If the driver was wonky, it would be having way more problems then "once before" it did this.

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Its a laptop - did it just come out of standby or hibernate? Why was it not restarted before starting a thread? If the driver was wonky, it would be having way more problems then "once before" it did this.

Not necessarily. My PC as a Ralink RT61 wireless card in it. About a year ago it started having disconnect issues (popped up 3 times over a month or so) that would only be fixed by a reboot. Uninstalled driver, reinstalled driver, fixed. I didn't have to touch it again until I just installed Windows 8. Sometimes things really just do go wonky.

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Sometimes -- k, this has been twice in how long? As far as we know there were 6 months between the issues. Jumping to reinstalling the driver is a bit premature from the info at hand if you ask me.

Why not just reinstall the whole OS, in case its something else that went wonky.

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Sometimes -- k, this has been twice in how long? As far as we know there were 6 months between the issues. Jumping to reinstalling the driver is a bit premature from the info at hand if you ask me.

Why not just reinstall the whole OS, in case its something else that went wonky.

Reinstalling the driver takes a matter of seconds. Reinstalling the OS can take a lot longer.

Rule of thumb...try the non destructive fixes first. Removing and reinstalling the driver is the least damaging thing that can be tried.

If that doesn't fix it, then move on to trying other troubleshooting steps. With all the stuff listed in your OS are I figured you had experience as a technician. If you do, you should know the good old KISS rule.

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Dude -- it was a joke, no **** you would not install the OS for something so minor ;)

Just like I would not bother reinstalling the driver for something as minor as I don't know the box hung coming out of standby.. Its working, thinking there is something wrong with the driver when its WORKING is taking a far fetch leap.

Which is why I went to an even more extreme and suggested might as well install the OS again.

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Dude -- it was a joke, no **** you would not install the OS for something so minor ;)

Just like I would not bother reinstalling the driver for something as minor as I don't know the box hung coming out of standby.. Its working, thinking there is something wrong with the driver when its WORKING is taking a far fetch leap.

Which is why I went to an even more extreme and suggested might as well install the OS again.

I know you were joking about the last bit. I was still making the point that a driver re-installation is non-destructive and a good starting point for testing.

Also if my box hangs coming out of standby, then yup I'm going to test things out. Funny this came up though. I just started using Sleep on my machine for the first time in a while last night (decided to test it out in 8), and had a system hang every single time I tried to sleep or do a normal shutdown. Restarting worked fine, but shutdown & sleep caused hangs.

Turns out my really, really old TV tuner driver (which I had to manually install) was to blame. There isn't a better driver, and since it's a non-digital tuner I just took it out. It's going in my box of swag items from my years of MS testing (Media Center team gave it to me for testing out MC Vista).

Also if there's issues with it not connecting when everything else is working means that there is an issue somewhere. What's wrong with tracking down issues on a system, even if they are intermittent?

Then again my attitude is likely why I can keep the same PC running for years with the same hardware with near 0 performance & stability degradation. I nip potential issues in the bud quickly.

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OK, the fact that this laptop exhibited the same issues while the wife was traveling was my concern, I had reset the computer and the issue did not go away, but with the second reboot it did. I have checked device manager and disabled the computer from 'sleeping' the wireless adapter, I had done this previously when I was having other issues with it, so it is not caused by power management, so I would guess that there was some other underlying issue with either the OS or the wireless adapter.

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