Help, my laptop suddenly quit connecting to the internet.

Don't reinstall Windows no matter what - that's way too drastic.
1. Shut down PC.
2. Unplug router/modem's power adapter from wall.
3. If the router/modem also has a phone wire connected to the wall, note carefully where it is connected and then unplug it.
4. If you have both a router and a modem, do steps 3 and 4 for each.
5. Wait 30 seconds for all these to shut down completely.
6. Plug these back in and wait 5 minutes for them to be totally operational again.
7. Start PC.
8. If issue not fixed, use "Restart" option to restart PC again.
9. If still not fixed, contact Internet Service Provider. There is a variety of things they can do on their end, as well as walking you through some things to do on your end.

I'm a Windows 10 "fast ring" upgrade tester, and the same thing happened to me after installing a recent upgrade -- sorry, didn't note the build number. Actually it was worse than just the Wi-Fi, I couldn't get the Ethernet port to work either. I rolled back to an earlier build of Win10, reconfigured my HP notebook's Wi-Fi adapter and Ethernet port, then upgraded to the latest build (which was probably the same build I had just rolled back from). Both connections -- and everything else -- worked again, although I have no idea what went wrong or how what I did "fixed" both problems. Personally, I blame gremlins.

1. Does that model have mini card wifi resources? If so, that's the first place I would look. Dells of that generation have that problem so often that if you google the make/model and something like 'wifi dead' you will get many, many hits - leading to the dead mini card. 2. I encountered something similar very recently on a machine, though I was also using a blue tooth keyboard. I added a wireless mouse to the mix and the wifi went down. Either some sort of field problem or interrupts. In your case, have you plugged in or connected anything at all, lately? It need not be an obvious conflict, but try to unplug/disconnect anything you might be connected to, reboot, and see.

I'm thinking you are able to see your wireless connection, but just can't get on to the Internet. Sometimes it's a DNS problem. Go to your wireless adaptor in the Network sharing center, right click on it, then go to properties. , Click on the TCP/IPv4, then click on properties. Select "use the following DNS and in primary DNS, type in 8.8.8.8. And for the alternate, type in 8.8.4.4. See if that helps.

I have an older Lenovo G570 laptop which came pre-loaded with Windows 7 As it has a wonky hinge I decided to use it when I became a Microsoft beta tester for Windows 8. It went from Windows 7 to 8 to 8.1 and finally to 10. One of the problems I encountered in Windows 10 was the loss of my wireless connection. I did not lose the connection until I had been working with 10 for at least 8 or 9 months. It happened after one of the many updates that come with being an "OS guinea pig". I went nuts trying to find a solution and I finally tried a usb wireless adapter - Kinivo WID340 300Mbps Dual Band Wireless N USB Adapter - and it worked the moment I plugged it in. I knew at that point that this was probably a driver issue and I went hunting for a driver that would work. Oddly enough it was a Qualcomm Atheros driver that finally worked with my Realtek RTL 8192DE wireless card. I found my solution by searching the Microsoft forums and the Windows 10 feedback site. Here is the solution that worked for me:

Open Device Manager, right-click the Realtek RTL8192DE Wireless LAN device and select Update driver software.
Select Browse my computer for driver software.
Select Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.
Select the “Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter” and install.

I realize the you have a Qualcomm Atheros wifi adapter not a realtek but perhaps this same driver will work for you. It is worth a try.

My advice to you is to try a usb wireless adapter. If that works at least you will be able to connect to the internet where you can try the above mentioned solution.

I have had similar problems with laptops that were wirelessly connected to my router. Do you also use a wireless printer, and is it also nearby? I have found that when I was getting "kicked off-line" from my router, I was actually wirelessly connected to my printer, which also broadcasts it's SID address.

Click on Settings, then open your Network & Internet folder. Confirm that it is turned on, and that it is connected to your router, and not yours or a neighbors wireless printer. If you find that it has connected wirelessly to the wrong device, but you still see you router's SID, then click on the correct SID to restore your connection.

I have had this experience a few times with my laptop. But it happens almost daily with Apple iPhone in my house.

I hope this is some help, good luck regardless.

Yes how frustrating! Rotten useless piece of junk, don't you just want to hurl it out the window sometimes?

OK spleen vented... time to apply the thinking cap.
I'm running W7 64bit on an ASUS laptop but have had similar issues with all my Windows products on various machines over the years.

Here are some things that worked for me.
First thing to do is reboot both ends, but I'm guessing you've tried that one adnauseum. When you rebooted did you allow the modem or router to cool down a bit & forget previous? It's why they say wait 20-30secs before switching back on. And of course any little badly placed switches have been placed in the 'on' position?

You've checked the hardware to be sure there's no yellow triangle icon over some hardware item that tells you it's not working properly?

Driver updates are things that have ruined my day for internet activity. Then it's a matter of checking for recent updates & rolling them back.

I recently has a situation where the actual router did an auto firmware update. That one had me stumped & it took me a full day to work it out but eventually the Windows auto repair fixed it for me. That's one of the good things about Windows, if you keep striking the same problem, it will usually bring up the Problem solver for you & hunt down various repair options.
Right clicking on the internet icon will bring it up too, then you just ask it to fix the issue & if it can't it gives you are series of options. But I guess you've done that too.

All these things have already been covered by other posters in one way or another but as an amateur user, these are the things that I do first to try to fix it.

If all those fail I will drag out the Ethernet cable & hook them together & see what happens. That basically *has* to work because they are hotwired & are forced to talk to each other no matter how much they might hate each other! If they've been on talking terms (as they have in your case for many months already) then have a divorce, the Ethernet cable should rectify the relationship.

While they are hotwired you can even install the router again & if you succeed through the whole process you can use the new installation & delete the old installation.

If all that doesn't work then it's usually a case of call the technician because it means some hardware is broken in some way.

I do wish you well. It's a hell of a task to trundle off to the local coffee shop or library to use the public wifi.

Hello,
Had this problem yesterday for one customer.
laptop wifi got address from router but no internet access.
router was ok as other could connect to the internet.
tried to connect to the router with ethernet cable, still no internet access.
laptop wifi could connect to the internet when using my phone as an internet provider.
so I did :
run chkdsk c: /f just to be sure
run ccleaner to get rid of strange files.
uninstall et reinstall avast (with a few reboots)
at this time restarted the router to get rid of its data caches.

And after the last reboot internet access was on again.
I am not happy, since I stil do not know the reason why this work again. I still think that might be a combination of disk error and some strange things with antivirus (or another service) and the router cache.
Since i noticed at the beginning that the internet connection was ok for a few seconds before being lost, probably the antivirus .
But it made a happy customer before the week-end. (took little 2 hours anyway...)

Enjoy
Pierre-Yves

This has happened a few times with my desktop while my Kindle Fires and phone are still connected, all running on wifi.

First, if my Kindle Fires or phone are too close to my desktop, that can cause my desktop to lose wifi. If I move them farther away, my desktop will connect.

Second, if it's not the above, I unplug the router, wait ten seconds, plug it back in, and my desktop connects to the wifi.

Third, if the above two methods don't work, I have a second desktop that I use for work and is connected directly to the modem. I will use either that or one of my Kindle Fires (which always connect with wifi) to log into my TWC account to refresh the modem.

One of the above methods ALWAYS works. Hope this helps.

Yep same here, 2 of my older laptops wouldn't connect to the router. One a Dell the other an HP.
My newer Lenovo works fine as do all my other wifi enabled devices. HP now connects intermittently but drops the internet now and again. Tried updating drivers etc nothing seemed to work. Only thing that helps is disconnecting and reconnecting to the router.

Paul

If WiFi is okay for other devices, the problem is probably in the laptop. Has it run updates recently? Have you tried to do a Restore? Online gaming web sites are malware magnets; are you running good, up-to-date anti-malware and other protection software? Is there an indicator light showing that your NIC is enabled? You might try to disable your built-in NIC and install an external NIC dongle to connect to the web and see if that works; if it does, the problem is with your built-in NIC. If so, you might try removing it from Device Manager and letting it get found again. Good luck!

Hi Bob
I had this problem a few months ago where everything seemed to be working on the router but no WiFi on any device, regardless of OS. Have you tried to see if your mobile phones can access this WiFi?
Turns out the problem was with the provider, who though initially showed everything working their end okay, saw that indeed there was a problem and reset it. Immediately everything came back to normal.
Good Luck

have you thought of going to Device Manager/network adapters, and uninstalling it then restart your computer it should pick it up and hopefully reinstall your driver. I find driver booster from IOBIT very useful when looking for drivers. hope this helps

Just sharing, I've had the same problem since i installed odyssee for my office's proxy, the wireless adapter became undeteced so i uninstalled odysee and reinstalled my wireless driver.. try to recollect what changes you've made to your computer prior to it's failure, i doubt rolling back to windiws 7 would do the trick since it's been doing fine for a year.. you could also use a usb wifi for a temporary solution, buy a port hub if your running out of ports, there'd be quite a bunch of wires dangling from it though haha

The simplest and easiest solution is to use an inexpensive usb adapter. With only two usb ports, you may also need a 4 port usb hub if your two ports are already in use.

The same thing happemed to me as well. In my case, the problem turned out to be the Antivirus software (Norton) suddenly going wrong. Uninstalling and then re-installing the software fixed it. It drove me crazy for a week.

go to msconfig
under the general tab, uncheck the 'load startup items' box
under services tab, check the box at the bottom to hide microsoft services.
write down or make a note of all the services which are checked
click on disable all, and apply
finish and follow instructions to reboot.
you will be starting without the misc. services and the startup items.
Try your internet now.
if it works, you will have to go back through and figure out if you really need any of those services. Those startup items should be examined carefully to see if you really need them.
I didn't need any of them to be started. And most of my startup items were not needed anyway because they start when I click on the desktop item.

Please let us know if/when you resolve this item.

Hi:
The fact that your driver worked for a year or so indicates it is compatible. If you upgraded and it never worked then incompatibility would be a consideration. So try going to device manager and uninstalling the driver. On reboot it should install from the recovery manager. Your adapter may also have failed.

Now if Windows 10 is working for you and all is okay otherwise go purchase a wireless access point. These are usb devices that will make you wireless again. You plug it into the usb port and connect....

Rohn

If any devices stop woring the very first thing I always do is go to Settings and devices , Hardware and check to see if the system even sees that device , like your Wi-Fi. Then If it sees it but it does not work then I tell the system to uninstall it and then I do a reboot. Usually if it was just a driver / .dll that went bad the system will see it and reinstall it and if there was nothing wrong with the hardware then it will come back on line fine. I've had to do this multiple times over the years with , in the old day dial up modems , then ethernet cards and now Wi-Fi cards.

I have two Dell Inspirions that I upgraded to Windows 10. After a few weeks one of them would not connect to the Internet. I spent days looking for the solution but couldn't find anything wrong. The commenter who said "look for the WiFi switch" was the closest to my solution, but there is no WiFi switch on the Inspirion Laptop.

Sudden DOH! moment. On the Inspirions the WiFi switch is F4. And, on mine, it's not marked on the key legends. Hit F4 and WiFi was back.

Hi Bob,
I upgraded my old Laptop HP-550 from Windows 7 to 10 without any hassles & did work on it for a few months quite smoothly until now, when it started to quit Wi-Fi, although my Router is Ok & every other device at Home was connecting to it but not the Laptop!
I tried to troubleshoot it through Windows inbuilt utility which told me that one item is missing in the protocol. I tried to contact Windows Support, Communities, Blogs etc. but to no avail. I was therefore left alone to work on it. I am not a Techie or Pro but I did accept the challenge & opened the Network Adaptor from the Settings, disabled it once & re-enabled it. It did work & my Laptop was immediately connected to Wi-Fi. Although it is working well but whenever this problem reoccurs, I simply try to disable & re-enable the Network Adapter without approaching any Communities & it works…!!!
Beyond all this, I really don’t know what could be the true reasons for that matter but at least I did find a solution for myself, which still works perfectly.

N.H.Rashdi

Sometimes your Firewall will stop all traffic. Try turning off whatever you are using, Windows 10 or a 3rd party Firewall and see what you have. I had Bitdefender managing my firewall. I turned it's Firewall off and switched to Windows 10 Firewall and everything started working fine. Then I uninstalled my Anti-Virus and then re-installed it. Turned back on my Bitdefender Firewall and everything is working good ever since.

1. Is there any possibility that someone else used the PC?

2. Have you tried the various Microsoft Troubleshooting/"Fix It", MSConfig, Services, tools available? Does a borrowed PC connect at your location? Can you connect at an unsecured coffee shop? Ethernet cabled connection?

As usual, Bob Proffitt had the right advice or at least the correct approach.

Forget about installing and reinstalling OS and forget about replacing the Atheros network card. Are these people kidding? Wifi network adapters don't last forever and are expensive to replace. An Atheros card quit on me on an old laptop. Replaced it with a better performance $10 USB one.

But do try a System Restore first, not System Reset. This problem "smells" like "Windows update" to me.

Sorry to hear that you are having WiFi issues. You are one among many who have had Windows 10 driver issues, I am one, too. I have several Dell Latitudes of various ages. I tried the Windows 10 upgrade on several of them. The main issue I had was with the wireless connections. Multiple disconnections, not being able to connect were two issues. One laptop could connect using wireless but not wired, After rebooting it could not connect using wireless but could connect using a wired connection. This went on for weeks while I waited for a Windows update to fix the problem. It didn't happen. Dell still says there is no plan to provide updated drivers for Windows 10 so there will be a compatibility problem with this laptop. This laptop now has Wndows 7 installed.
An older Dell laptop seems to work well enough so far, just not as well as it did using Windows 7. I cannot get some programs to work properly though. This one has two hard drives so I can go back and forth between Windows 7 and Window 10. I still like Windows 7.

Other posts mentioned the WiFi switch on the outside of the laptop being accidentally turned off. That has happened on one of my laptops that stays on a desk and is not moved around. It took a bit of time to realize what happened. This sounds like the most likely thing with yours too.

I hope you find your solution easily.
Good luck.