I just got a cheap-ass Toshiba laptop running Windows Vista, really as a backup and travel computer. But as a travel computer, it has a serious failing, namely, that I can’t connect to the internet using the built-in wireless. But here is the odd thing: I can connect to whatever wireless network is in range; but once I am connected, I can’t get on the internet. I click on the available diagnostic and repair options, but they never work. Any suggestions?
You aren’t getting an IP address probably because the people who own the wireless don’t want you to. They probably have a MAC filter enabled. The same behavior occurred when my GF got a new laptop and I hadn’t added her to my filter yet.
If it’s YOUR wireless, reset the router and you should be fine.
ETA: If it’s your wireless router and you don’t know how to enter the settings mode, let us know.
What Flander said. Unless it’s an open public access network you usually won’t get on. In times past you might have hada even shot at hopping on an open network but most people are savvy enough at this point to use security protocols these days to restrict access. Try it at some place with free wifi advertised and see if it connects there.
Not necessarily. Vista does something strange between the time when it gets an IP address and when it decides it’s connected to the internet, and during that time, you can’t use the internet. I have a laptop which works great under XP for accessing my wireless network, but under vista, it spends some time in the “identifying network” stage, during which “ipconfig” indicates that it did get an IP address on my network, but I can’t actually access the internet. Unfortunately, more often than not, at the end of the “identifying network” stage, Vista decides the network is no good and disconnects me. Extremely frustrating and making me want to nuke vista for good (I know, it might be the fault of the NIC drivers, but knowing where to place blame doesn’t really help me out much).
No, these are networks I am supposed to be able to use: two airport networks I actually paid money to connect to, and the in-room wireless at a hotel where I was staying.
If you could tell me how to enter the settings mode, I will try to reset the router. There is supposed to be wireless in the common areas of our condo building, so I can experiment tonight or tomorrow.
Unfortunately, reseting the router means physically unplugging it and plugging it back in after a few seconds. Accessing the router’s setup involves knowing the password, which you probably won’t (and shouldn’t) know because, again, it’s not your router.
ntucker, I know what you mean with Vista. I’m running it on my desktop and a few laptops on my network. It seems to take a while before actually connecting to the internet. It connects to a local network first (meaning you can see the other computers on your network), then goes from there.
S and I, in Vista you should be able to right click on the network icon in the system tray and select “Connect to Wireless Network” (I’m going on memory right now as my Vista system is at home). That will display a list of all available wireless networks and also tell you if they are encrypted or not. There isn’t a way to tell if they have a MAC filter on though. Look for one that says something like “linksys” or “default”. 9 out of 10 times, that’s a wide open network you can try to connect to.
Another option - reset your network adaptor: click on the network icon in the system tray and select “Network Sharing Center”. From there, click “manage network connections” on the right. Right click on your wireless network adaptor and click disable (UAC should yell at you). Then, right click and select Enable (again, UAC double checks). After it enables, give it a minute to see if connects.
Like I said, connecting to the wireless network isn’t the problem; that goes without a hitch. But once I’m connected to the network, I am still not connected to the internet. This, I do not understand (and don’t know how to fix).
Yeah, I know. Just going through the basic crap. Vista connects to the wireless network, but then you don’t get internet (local traffic only). Shot in the dark, try disabling the Windows firewall then resetting your network adapter.
The trouble shooting options are limited being that it isn’t your wireless network you’re having trouble getting internet through.
If the “repair connection” thing always fails, what message does it give you upon failing?
If i try to add a new wireless connection to my router, but I type in the encryption key wrong, the computer will appear to connect to the network but will not have access to the internet.
It’s almost certainly a firewall issue. On one of my laptops I had to completely uninstall the firewall to get connected - simply disabling it didn’t work.
That sucks; I don’t dare uninstall my firewall when I’m surfing, do I?
When you connect to the network , open up the wireless icon in the taskbar and confirm what network your actually on, sometimes windows connects to the strongest possible and not the one that you actually want.
Declan
I reinstalled it and everything was okay. The previous installation of the firewall just got hosed for some reason.
If you’re using a router with NAT, you have some substantial protection even without a firewall.
I always manually connect to the network and select it from a list of available networks, so that shouldn’t be the problem. And when I disconnect, it is always from the network I wanted to connect to in the first place. I might uninstall and reinstall my firewall, though that will be a pain in the ass–I guess it means uninstalling and re-installing my entire McAfee security suite. 
Can you just kill the process or service instead of uninstalling the whole suite? And btw, it’s OK to surf a bit if you don’t have a firewall running.
You could also try booting into Safe Mode with Networking.
is Bad! No firewall and no router is not a great idea. You will have 10 to 15 minutes before you get a trojan. Yep I have done the experiment.
joe
Fuckety. I’ll try uninstalling and re-installing McAfee. It’s a bit of a pain in the nuts b/c I don’t actually have a McAfee disk; I bought the protection suite on-line and downloaded it from the McAfee site. I’m not sure they ever sent me a disk.
I had a couple clients that had a problem. in those cases it was a IPV6 error on the older router. Basically the router doesn’t support the newer protocol. Since you cant update the hotels router try disabling IPV6 on the laptop. Of course make sure that the wireless button on the laptop is ON.
This site has a walk through on pdf:
http://wiki.williams.edu/display/docs/How+to+disable+IPV6+on+Vista
joe
Ooh, I’ll try this.
I find this hard to believe unless you already had some kind of spyware on your computer or were surfing in less-than-credible websites. I may try this experiment tonight.