I have been using this wifi setup for about a year now. I’ve got a PC, Mac, phone, and tablet, and the PC’s connectivity has always been a bit spottier than the other devices, but today it just threw a full-on temper tantrum and has been refusing to connect for several hours, even though I’m posting this from the Mac literally right next to it on the same network.

I have both a USB wifi adapter and a PCI one, and both of them can see the network, but both get the “Can’t connect to this network” error when I try to connect to it.

Weirdly, when I first got home and booted it up, it was actually working fine for a couple of minutes before it went down. It’s done that in the past too, but usually I just give it a minute and it comes back on. No such luck tonight.

Solutions I’ve tried:

  • waiting for it to turn back on on its own
  • restarting the computer
  • shutting down the computer, waiting, and turning it back on
  • hotspotting with my phone (technically worked, but was so painfully slow it was more frustrating than no internet at all)
  • using the hotspot to update my device drivers (no updates available)
  • forgetting the network and trying to connect again (still can’t connect, but now need to enter security key every time I try)
  • network reset: this renamed my wifi adapters from “wi-fi 3” and “wi-fi 4” to “wi-fi” and “wi-fi 2” in the connection manager, but did not solve the problem
  • sacrificing a goat to ug-qualtoth (didn’t actually, but thought about it)

I did not try resetting the router because 1. none of my other devices are having any problems whatsoever and 2. I share my house with five other people.

Are there any other solutions I can try short of buying yet another wifi adapter and crossing my fingers that it actually works this time?

e: Thanks for the tips. I will attempt them when I get home tonight and report back with success or failure. I did test this morning before I left for work and found that it did not in fact magically fix itself overnight, so… yay for consistency, I guess.

  • Maharashtra
    3•1 year ago

    Run the same computer from USB with Linux Live CD (Fedora suggested, it’s damn good hardware-compatibility wise). Observe how it behaves.

    • sinoEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      This is a good idea to rule out hardware compatibility issues. If OP is technically inclined I would also recommend to install wireshark and capture the traffic on the Wi-Fi adapter to see what’s going on with the traffic during the connection.

  • @AgentCodyBanksEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    Release and renew your IP address on a Windows PC

    Click Start then Run and type cmd in the Open field. Press Enter. If prompted, select Run as administrator. Type ipconfig /release and press Enter. Type ipconfig /renew and press Enter. Type exit and press Enter to close the window.

    If you’re trying to release and renew your IP address and get an error message on Windows 7 or later: Click Start then Run and type cmd and press Enter to launch the command screen. Type netsh winsock reset catalog and press Enter. Type exit and press Enter to close the window. Reboot your computer.

    • @AgentCodyBanksEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      If ipconfig doesn’t work try winsock. Every once in a blue moon it’s that

  • @IonAddisEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    I know you don’t want to reset the router, but are you able to log in to the router and look at what ip addresses it has assigned to your pc? And then use ipconfig /all from the windows command line to compare?

    I once had issues when another device took the ip addy my pc was using, I think it was someone else’s phone, but it caused my connection to go to shit until I forcibly gave my pc a unique ip for the local home network

    Edit: Like the other person said, doing a release and renew of your IP address from the PC’s command line should fix this problem if it’s the root issue. ipconfig /release then do ipconfig /release6 Then do ipconfig /renew and ipconfig /renew6 . You do it twice to make sure you get both IPV4 and IPV6 ip addresses.

    Edit 2: The techy page from Microsoft re: this command: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/ipconfig