Laptops can't connect to wireless

Factual Questions
1

Have 2 laptops, 4 iPhones, 1 iPad, and 2
Kindles in the house. Only devices not connecting are the laptops. Recently installed a new router, but used one of the laptops with no problems yesterday. It stayed connected all day. Tonight when I got on I get the message “cannot connect to this network.” I used to connect to this router at college with this same laptop all the time. Now we installed it at home and it’s not working.

I’ve updated, reinstalled, and rolled back wireless drivers. I’ve restarted the computer. When we unplugged the router it solved the problem for about an hour, but it suddenly cut out again while I was online.

Old router was not password protected. This one is, but I know the password is typed in correctly.

I ran command prompt and typed ipconfig. Wireless LAN adapter Local Area Connection, Ethernet Bluetooth network connection, Wireless LAN adapter wi-Fi, and Ethernet Adapter Ethernet all come up as “media disconnected.”

I was thinking it was a hardware issue as I’ve had some trouble in the past, but it was always resolved by restarting computer or updating a driver. Problems started when I updated to windows 8.1. But since other laptop is having same issues now, I’m not sure it’s hardware related. That laptop is still on Windows 7.

Windows 8.1 laptop is a Lenovo. Less than a year old.
Windows 7 laptop is a Sony Vaio. About 3-4 years old.

When running troubleshooting on either one it just says there is a problem between router and access point. Nothing I haven’t encountered before, but I’ve always been able to fix it. Now if the wireless bars look connected it just says “Identifying…no internet access.”

Can’t test wired connection at the moment. My dad’s asleep in the room with the router. Don’t think that would help anything anyway since this is a problem with both laptops.

Wondering if it has something to do with different types of security on the two routers? Don’t know how to investigate that though.

Please help. I have homework on the internet and I really want to graduate in 2 weeks!!

2

Iv’e had problems like that before and it’s always been a password problem. Have you tried connecting with no password set? No one is going to hack into your computer in the few minutes it takes to test this. I remember one time when I was convinced the password was correct, but turning off the password soon proved me wrong.
Good luck anyway.

3

Have you tried changing the WiFi channel? In high-noise situations (a lot of neighbors around you on close frequency channels), the overhead of WPA or WEP can result in unusable connections that would otherwise be marginally usable.

More extreme than the WiFi channel would be to switch bands altogether. If you’re on G, try switching to N and turning off G (or vice versa).

It’s a shot in the dark, but perhaps worth a try. If someone you know has an Android device, get them to try WiFi Analyzer at your house to see what the spectrum distribution looks like. Choose the emptiest band/channel you can and see if that helps. (The program might also be available on Cydia for jailbroken iDevices, but I’ve never had one so I dunno…)

4

How do I change the channel? That’s one thing I haven’t tried. Don’t know anyone who has an Android device.

Also…how do I turn off the password once it has been set?

5

Usually by accessing your router through a browser, on a computer connected to that router. The IP address of the router depends on the router, but the most common seems to be 192.168.1.1.

6

The IP of your router is the default gateway on your computer, provided the computer is connected.