My newest computer (Dell 64-bit Inspiron, Windows 7) had some kind of crash and lost its power to connect to the internet. But it doesn’t seem to think it’s not connected. It detects and connects with Wifi networks, or thinks it does. I know it’s seeing them, because I recognize the network names that I can pick up from home. When I use the control panel functions to troubleshoot my internet connection, it doesn’t identify anything, and refers me to help pages which can only be found … on the internet.
And I made at least two bad mistakes somehow. Though I always kept a system restore point before making any changes, when I tried restoring to a previous date, there were none – so maybe that took a hit too. Also, early on I thought it might be Google Chrome that took a hit, so I uninstalled that. But even though I have the installation file downloaded, it turns out that Google needs an internet connection to install Chrome. So I am without a browser.
I am using my old computer now, which blue-screens fairly often (that’s why I bought the new one) but at least has a solid internet connection.
I’m trusting you here that this isn’t the aftermath of malicious code you accidentally downloaded or anything. Maybe a power flux did it.
You’re looking to uninstall your network adapter drivers and reinstall them. If you have your computer’s original spec sheet, great, you can see what specific network adapter you have and use that to look up the drivers by going to the supplier’s website (Realtek is common for instance). There you would go to their downloads or support section and muddle through their questions and prompts until you end up at the driver page for your network card and your OS. Download it and put it on a thumbdrive. An installer option is best.
You’d uninstall the old drivers by going to Control Panel -> Device Manager -> Network Adapters, and right click then Uninstall on your specific card. Then you’d run your installer to put on new drivers and hope that fixes it.
If you don’t have your spec sheet, you may have to crack the computer case and peer at some tiny numbers on your network card to figure out your make and model. I always figure in situations like this, I can’t make it worse because it already doesn’t work. So put your fingers in there and take it out if you have to, breaking be damned (power it off first, naturally!). Don’t be scared about the drivers! It already doesn’t work so you can’t make it worse.
Try the easiest thing first, change the channel that it connects on. Log on to the router and find the drop down menu in the wifi settings for Channel and just randomly pick a different one.
What your saying is one of the tell tale signs of someone in your neighborhood getting a router on the same channel as you with strong signal and bumping you off.
Start with that. See if it helps. Even if it doesn’t, there’s no harm done, it’ll take 5 seconds and it’s a helluva lot easier then reinstalling drivers.
I think this will work, but there is a problem. I have all necessary data to go to Dell’s website and download the necessary drivers.
The problem is the size. Just one (already-zipped) file that is the network/wifi driver is 140 megs, and I don’t have flash drive big enough. Nor at this time can I afford to go out and buy one. The only flash drive I have at the moment is 1 gig. I’m gonna look around for some freeware that can split files up and put them back together.
I’m a little concerned that my downloading machine is 32-bit and the disabled machine is 64-bit, and I wonder if that has connotations for splitting and moving a file between the two.
Sorry, I screwed up my terminology, but I was right that my flash drive isn’t big enough. It’s actually 143,000 kilobytes. Windows tells me my flash drive needs another 139 megs to hold the file, and that’s after having erased all the other contents of the flash drive.
Did you empty your recycle bin? I vaguely remember (maybe it was on a Mac) that the contents of the flashdrive were not actually off the drive until I emptied the recycling bin. In the meantime, they were invisible and still taking up room.
The free flashdrive that came with my parent’s computer in 2001 was 250MB so I’m really at a loss as to how you could have a flash drive too small for a 143 MB file.
I didn’t mean to pick about something that wasn’t the main point, I just mean that figuring out the flashdrive thing is handy information to know for the future as well. I remember thinking my flashdrive was screwed up until I threw it on another computer and saw the huge invisible trash file there and went “OH. That’s what was eating all the room!”
Hope it works out for you. That’s a large installer so I’m assuming it has software bundled in and maybe drivers for absolutely everything included
Shit, it’s not fixed. I know the install was doing things, because half a dozen times during it I saw a little windows box popping open and saying, “Your device is successfully installed and ready to go”.
So you’re able to connect to the WiFi, but you’re not able to get out to the internet? Do you have DSL, or cable? Do you have a wireless router and a modem (DSL or cable), or is it an all-in-one, modem/router/wifi combo? If it’s the former, did both pieces of equipment come from your provider, or do you own the wireless device?
If you think your Chrome is busted, try Internet Explorer, it comes with Windows.
Also, do you have other WiFi-enabled devices on your network that work off that same router? Because connecting to a router but getting no internet sounds like a router problem.
And, try this: Click start, in the search box type CMD and press enter. Then type the follwing command and press Enter:
ping 8.8.8.8
This is a good low-level test that will send out small packets from your computer to Google’s domain name server and time how long it takes for a response. A typical display would look like this:
The times like “30ms” are what you’re looking for. 100ms is 1 second.
I have no home internet service at the moment – that should be rectified in another month or so. I have been using several close by unsecured free wifi spots, like the public library and a Starbucks up the street.
This was my first thought. I had a similar experience a with a laptop a long while ago and remember that everything seemed to be functional but still no internet…and then I discovered that all I had to do was push a wifi enable button.
I don’t know if the Inspiron has this but it can be easily forgotten if you rarely use this feature.
