IE won’t connect on wireless laptop

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I helped a friend install a new wireless modem, but IE won’t connect on his wife’s Vista SP2 laptop. When I go to the wireless connect window it shows the wireless connection is OK and it has a strong signal. However, when running Internet Explorer it cannot connect. As far as I can tell the wireless connect is there and working, but not IE or her Email program.
Any suggestions?

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Hi Chuck,
Check the Firewall settings.

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I would open the Network and Sharing Center (right click on internet icon in taskbar). You might have to setup a new connection or network.

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I did work briefly with that, but no luck. I’ll have to give it another try.

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open up a command prompt. Type IPconfig /all and publish the results here.

Jerry

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Unfortunately I’m doing this via phone with my friend, so I’m having to write down what he tells me, but here it goes:

Host Name … Bettyjo-PC [That’s his wife’s computer name]
Primary Dns Suffix …
Node Type:… Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled … No
WINS Proxy Enabled … No

Wireless WIN Adapter (etc.):
Connection Specific DNS Suffix … san.rr.com
Description .. Atheros AR5007 (etc.)
Physical Address … 00-23-4D-08-DF-CB
DHCP Enabled … Yes
Auto Config … Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address: (very long hexidecimal-like series)
Default gateway… 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server … 192.168.1.1

There is a bunch of other data, but the above is the first part.

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Isn’t there an IPv4 address?

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Sorry, right underneath the IPv6 is this line:

IPv4 Address… 192.168.1.105 (Preferred)

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That implies you have a good connection to the router. Right click on the wireless symbol and select troubleshoot problems.

Jerry

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Yes, it has a good wireleess connection. I’ve been around the bend with the “troubleshooting problems” option to no effect. For some reason Internet Explorer and the Email program simply don’t connect.

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Open a cmd window and type ping http://www.microsoft.com. What are the results?

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Ping returns “Ping request could not find host” which is no surprise. Somehow programs on the laptop are unable to connect through the wireless connection.

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Hello Chuck,

your friend is being assigned an IP address by the router, but a ping of an external website does not work. That indicates a problem with the DNS configuration.

There could be a number of things causing that, so please bear with me.

[*]Sorry to ask an obvious question: Is broadband connected? If the dsl connection has failed, there will be no external internet access.
[*]The IPConfig /All data you supplied says something about a DNS setting of san.rr.com. Can you check the DNS settings in the network adapter? Is it set to get DNS automatically, or is there an IP address there? (Open the wireless adapter properties and drill down to the TCP properties to find this info). If there is an IP address entered in the DNS settings what is it?
[*]Browse to the router login page, drill down into its Wide Area Network (WAN) settings and check the DNS settings. Is it set to automatically receive DNS from the service provider or is it set to a specific ip address (if so what?).
[*] In the router config page, can you adjust the DNS settings? If you can, try setting DNS to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (the OpenDNS.org servers). This will override anything from your friends service provider.
[*]If you can’t adjust the router DNS settings, try setting the laptop to the Open DNS settings above in the wireless adapter TCP settings.

By the way, I just tried to ping san.rr.com and it failed. It recognised the ip address as 24.25.195.1, but failed to reach the host. I tried a traceroute to 24.25.195.1 which also failed to identify a route to the dns host. I’m not familiar with that host, so can’t say for sure, but possibly the dns host is offline. If that’s the case, the above fixes to change the DNS settings to Open DNS should work.

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I was going to ask Tinto’s first question as well. There should be an indicator light on your router that indicates a good internet connection to your cable/DSL modem. Read the documentation that came with your router. If you have a good internet connection, follow the rest of Tinto’s excellent advice.

Tinto, san.rr.com (Roadrunner ISP?) may be behind a walled garden only accessible by the ISP’s customers.

Jerry

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To repeat what I said before: The router is set up correctly. My friend’s computer is hardwired to the router and it connects to the Internet with no problems. Running Ping http://www.san.rr.com from his computer (XP SP3) returns the ISP’s IP address OK. san.rr.com is their ISP (San Diego Road Runner). In other words the Internet connection works normally from his computer.

The problem lies with his wife’s laptop that connects wirelessly. At the laptop when checking the wireless connection it advises that it is connected OK. So she has a live wireless connection to the laptop, but internally the software (IE and Email) somehow can’t find the connection.
So I don’t think the problem lies with the router. It looks like they need to reconfigure the laptop. I’ll suggest going to IE Tools | Internet Options | Connections and follow that setup. I’ll report back as soon as I know anything more.

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Working via phone with my friend I got him to the IE Connections dialog box, had him enter the user name and (surprise, surprise) he can’t remember or find the password! I’m sure that when I set him up originally I wrote it down (I ALWAYS do that) and told him to put it in a safe place. The place is now so safe he cant’ find it.
I have asked him to contact his ISP and see if they can guide him through it.
Thanks for all your comments and suggestions. I’m going to wait and see what happens with the ISP tech support.

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Working via phone with my friend I got him to the IE Connections dialog box, had him enter the user name and (surprise, surprise) he can’t remember or find the password! I’m sure that when I set him up originally I wrote it down (I ALWAYS do that) and told him to put it in a safe place. The place is now so safe he cant’ find it.
I have asked him to contact his ISP and see if they can guide him through it.
Thanks for all your comments and suggestions. I’m going to wait and see what happens with the ISP tech support.

Why would this be needed? Isn’t the router connected to the internet and thus serving as a DHCP server, effectively sharing the internet connection?

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I just went back and re-read the posts, and we may have missed a step. We started in the right direction but then I think we got sidetracked. The process I normally use to troubleshoot wireless connectivity is as follows.

Bring up a command prompt and type ipconfig /all. That was done and showed a valid address.

Next, I would have tried pinging the default gateway as shown by the ipconfig. A successful ping at that point would verify connectivity and communication with the router. This is the step I think we missed.

If we cannot ping the router, then we are not properly connected to the wireless or there is an IP misconfiguration. Check local ip config and/or remove the existing “saved” wireless profile and retry the connection.

If we can ping the router but not an outside address (microsoft.com or google.com) then we try to ping them by IP. If pinging by IP works, but not by name, then we have a DNS issue. If pinging a known good outside address by IP fails but we can successfully ping the router, then we have network connectivity, but blocked access – look for a firewall issue.

Hopefully by this point the problem will be resolved, or we will know the point of failure.

Good Luck

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I don’t know if the problem has been solved yet. I noticed on the original ipconfig /all… there was an IPv6 address, in addition to an IPv4 address. Maybe try disabling IPv6… somewhere in the wireless adapter options. Maybe the wireless and both IPv6 and IPv4 are having conflicts.

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Tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver a couple of times with no results

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I’ll have to try disabling ipv6 if I can ever figure out how in the router.

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I’ll have to try disabling ipv6 if I can ever figure out how in the router.

I think the option to disable IPv6 should be in your computer network adapter settings. Since you’re getting a router IP of 192.168.1.1, I don’t think your router is set to IPv6 (but I could easily be imstaken). If you can get to network connections in your computer (or similar), and get to your network adapter properties, you should be able to get to a box that has options for the network adapter. There, you should see a bunch of stuff… two of which are IPv6 and IPv4. Just uncheck IPv6. Hope this helps…

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I see we have now tried pinging the router (192.168.1.1) without success. Naturally, if pinging the router wont work, it’s unlikely any other address would.
We have isolated the problem to the connection between the laptop and the router. We can try pinging our own address (192.168.1.116 I think it was, but this could change – the ipconfig/all will tell) or the loopback at 127.0.0.1 if that works it would indicate the local network protocols are working. If not, we need to revisit the local network settings, but this is probably working. Most likely we will need to remove the existing saved “Preferred Network” (Network and Sharing Center – Manage Wireless Networks) and then recreate by reconnecting and re-entering the encryption key, and this will likely resolve.

Good Luck

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There may be something to this. I tried pinging the DNS server and it replied with “Reply from 192.168.1.116 host unreachable”. Same thing with trying to ping 192.168.1.1. Also cannot pint outside address. I’ve tried with firewall off and on with no results.

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My wife is constantly putting things in safe places. Most of them are still very safe as we cannot find them. Who knew. LOL

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You know what? I have exactly the same problem with my wife.

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I don’t know that it’s needed, but Im runningout of options. So far as I can tell the router is successfully serving as a DHCP server because the lady’s laptop shows the wireless as “connected.” Thus, I assume the router is working correctly (It certainly works OK with the other computer). However, the laptop can’t seem to find or use the wireless connection, i.e. “ping” doesn’t find a host, etc.. So I assumed that for some reason IE hadn’t established the Internet connection. I’m sure I’m missing something somwhere.

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Hello Chuck,

sorry, but the hardwired machine working correctly is new information in this thread and so rules out a lot of my earlier suggestions.

I think you need to get some basic’s established first. So, a few more thoughts that may help narrow it down:

If his wife’s laptop has a wireless disable switch, use that to turn off the wireless port. Failing that turn it off by disabling the wireless adapter in the network connections, but be sure it’s the wireless port. Now connect the laptop to the router using the ethernet cable used for your friends machine. Does it now work? If so, you have narrowed it down to solely a wireless connection issue (not the wifi connection, but the internet access through that connection….see my final comments). If it doesn’t work hardwired, then there is a more general issue with internet connectivity on that machine.

Assuming for a moment that a wired connection does work OK on the laptop…… I have seen some users attempt to connect wireless laptops (Vista specifically) to the internet using the “connect to Internet” wizard, which attempts to setup up a ppoe dsl connection with a username and password, when in fact all that is necessary is to connect to the router. I wonder if that’s what they have done in this case? Perhaps ask them to remove all “internet connections” in the machine (as opposed to the wireless connection), falling back to only the wifi connection and see if that works.

If the laptop does not work correctly on a wired connection, then there is a more fundamental issue…… They could download a Linux Live CD on the machine that works and boot the laptop off that to verify if the laptop hardware is OK. Running the Linux CD has the advantage that it is completely independent of the existing software configuration, so if that works when Vista does not, it’s likely to be a network config problem in Vista. If the Linux Live CD does not work either, then the laptop has a hardware fault.

One final thought. If wired connection to the router from laptop works OK, can your friend’s wife take the machine to a neighbour or public access WiFi and try there? It would help verify the router is in fact routing internet access over wireless.

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Chuck,
check the Internet Options.

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Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll give them a try. I find it strange that the laptop quit connecting. The only thing that changed was the installation of a new wireless router. She was working wirelessly OK before the change and as far as I could tell installation of the new router went smoothly. I’m sure I’m missing something here.

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The laptop works perfectly on a hardwired connection to the router. Why it won’t work through the wireless connection remains a mystery.

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OK, if it connects hardwired then you have the opportunity to establish a remote desktop connection and investigate the wireless network adapter properties directly. This will be much easier than attempting to debug over the phone.

I would look at the tcp/ip & dns settings of the wireless interface and also check whether your friend has attempted to setup up an internet connection. This happens when people get confused between a wifi connection and an internet connection. In Vista, following the “connect to internet” wizard gives the option to setup a dsl or cable connection when that is already established at the router and running that wizard is not required at all. The wireless interface options should appear as per Roderunner’s attachment (but perhaps not lime green in colour!)

In any case, you should be on the home stretch if you can get a remote desktop session established. Ask your friend to raise a remote assistance request and send it to you by email, or, use Logmein or TeamViewer to establish remote access to the machine.

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Hi Chuck

Not sure if you have solved the problem yet, however I had the exact same problem about 6 months ago after replacing a wireless router. The only solution I found after weeks of trying many suggestions from both searches and technical support was to completely uninstall the wireless driver making sure to delete the driver (tick box on remove option in control panel) the then reboot to reinstall the driver. I also found upgraded drivers did not work, had to go bak to the original. It took several goes of this sequence to get the wireless working but has not missed a beat since.

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It’s odd, but I believe I got the “Reply from 192.168.1.116 host unreachable” message when I pinged the DNS Server at 209.18.47.61.
I’ve also been advised to reset the tcp/ip setup, but I”m not sure how one does that.

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Yes, if the router is unreachable at 192.168.1.1, then anything outside will be unreachable (you need to get to router first). Did you try pinging 127.0.0.1 to see if that is successful? Did you try removing the “saved” profile from the Network and Sharing Center and then retrying the wireless connection – you will need to re-enter the encryption key.

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another quick thing to try to reset the tcpip is to run a cmd prompt “As Administrator” (type cmd into the search, when found right click and select Run As Administrator) and then type “netsh winsock reset”.
Good Luck

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I’ll have to try that one.

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I didn’t try 127.0.0.1, but I removed the saved profile a couple of times and re-entered it along with the passcode to no effect.

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Are you sure that it is connecting to the correct WIFI router?

In my household a neighbours WIFI router is physically closer to my PC than my own router.

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It’s definitely the right router as it has that router’s SSID.

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