This comes up several times a week for me. A user complains that their laptop used to connect to a network fine and now it will not. This opens a can of worms for what the root cause may be, but I wanted to list a few considerations and examples of what I find often.
- Is the laptop powered on? (Just kidding, this is an old joke)
- Some laptops have a key sequence or a physical button that can turn off the wireless radio emitter, this may be turned off.
- Is the wireless card disabled? Right-click on “My Network Places” and choose properties
- Many laptops have two versions of wireless configuration software. Only one of them should be controlling your wireless connections. I find a lot of users trying to configure the wrong one, but no one told them there was two! Windows has it’s own wireless configuration utility, but it is possible you may have another version now controlling things, it’s worth checking out.
- The network you are trying to connect to may be password protected to allow access.
- The driver software that controls your wireless network card may be corrupted.
- Your wireless router or similar device may in fact be faulty, have incorrect settings, or the wireless radio on this device may be turned off
- Your ISP (internet service provider) service may be down
These are the main causes, although there can be others that are not so common. If you are getting frustrated, you can always give us a call or contact us here. Typically, a repair like this takes an average of 1-2 hours, but it all depends on what the true cause is. We can work with your remotely, and if necessary send a technician out to your location if things are that bad. We have technicians all over the country, so it’s just a matter of scheduling . I hope this helps.
