Odd WiFi Problem

[therfiles]

Hey all

 

So I was trying to help a friend out today fix her low-end, touchscreen HP (Windows 8) laptop (I'm known as the neighborhood computer geek). She had a very weird problem. She was able to connect to a wireless network, but she wasn't able to receive internet access. I've fixed this many times. Usually all I have to do is restart, do some cmd prompt ipconfig stuff (/flushdns), or make sure there isn't any firewall problems. Everything I've tried didn't work.

 

She's using Google Chrome (I only use Firefox, so that didn't help) and when I did /flushdns, her internet worked...at least for a minute or so. Then, it would stop working, and give a "not connected to the internet" error. I tried a couple other things (including a winstock restart...a forum told me to) and that worked...temporarily. I've never heard of a problem quite like this. Has any one encountered anything like this? It's very odd.

 

I don't have the specs, but I could probably help. I've done some googling, but no solution seems to do the trick. She's recently been gone (laptop hasn't been used in a month). Could this be a hardware issue? Could her wireless card be dead? How about an IP problem? I'm just a bit out of my league at the moment. Any help would be incredibly awesome.

 

Thanks!

[Circa]

Does connecting via Ethernet work? Probably unrelated, but might help anyway.

 

I've seen this problem a few times, and I can't really think of the solution at the top of my head. It could be the wireless card being funky. Do you have a USB wireless adapter on hand to test with?

[IrocJeff]

Did you try going into power management turn off any power saver stuff for that wireless adapter?

[Mysterious Stranger]

See if changing the wifi channel might help. Like if it were on default set it to 9 etc.

[+FRivan]

Windows 8 drivers. Attempt to uninstall and reinstall. It sometimes has conflicts, plus, try even trying to install different drivers. I had this error myself at one point in time. On one system, I had to just reinstall the drivers. On another, the entire OS. 

[therfiles]

Cool. Thanks guys. The wireless card power saving seems like a good lead, but I want to try some tests (ethernet, wired internet connection) to make sure it's the WiFi. She was open to backing up her files and resetting everything, which I thought was very extreme, but that could work. We'll keep that option open just in case.

 

And yeah, I can dig out an old USB adapter real quick. Good ideas, everyone!

 

EDIT: Oooh, oddly enough, I can still use ping google.com and recieve a good signal. What...

[JediBantha]

I read the thread as Obi-WiFi, lol.

[Xycaleth]

It could be a problem with the DNS perhaps? When she's able to access the Internet, ping a website (e.g. jkhub.org, facebook.com, doesn't matter which) and make a note of the IP address that the domain name resolves to. Wait a while until the Internet connection stops working and try pinging the IP address. If it works, then it's a DNS issue. If not then...not sure

[therfiles]

@@Xycaleth: That makes sense. I was able to temporarily fix the problem by entering "ipconfig /flushdns", so that seems like a logical conculsion. What is the main thing that usually goes wrong with DNS?

[Xycaleth]

In the past I've experienced problems where my ISP's DNS servers would go down for periods of time. You can either fix it by switching DNS servers (Google, OpenDNS), or calling up her ISP and seeing if they can see any problems on their end. If it's not a DNS issue, her ISP should be able to help anyway as they might be able to see why her connection keeps dropping.

 

And now I think about it, it could be something else! If she's on ADSL, another problem I've come across is where the connection's downstream SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) was too low - I think the ideal is around 6dBA, anything lower and the connection is likely to cut off. The symptom you'll see with this is a gradual drop of connection speed until it just stops working. This is something the ISP would need to fix as they would have to boost the signal. You should be able to find what the SNR is in the router 'control panel' like page thing.

 

EDIT: Re-reading your first post, it's probably not the SNR thing Only way to get it working again if it disconnects due to that problem is by reconnecting the Internet connection itself, but you seem to be fixing it by flushing the DNS...

[therfiles]

Thanks everyone for your advice! I did a combination of things of suggested here and it seems to be working!

[Bek]

Ironically I was having the same problem, it's the main contributor to my prolonged absence. I manage to get it working just by restarting my router, but this only works temporarily. The weirdest part of this error is the fact that other computers are able to connect to the internet with no problems at all.    

[Futuza]

Sometimes issues like this can also be solved (if it isn't on the ISP or router end of things), by "uninstalling" the computer's wifi driver and the reinstalling from device manager.

[therfiles]

I recently had troubles with my own router and modem (mainly from my ISP), and I was just fed up with that, and so I switched to Google DNS and it's been great!

[Bek]

I may just use that.