Laptop not seeing local WiFi

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My friend has Comcast Business and uses a laptop to wirelessly connect to the internet. A technician from Comcast came in and did some work on the phone system via the Modem and now the HP laptop doesn’t see the wireless network. I brought the laptop home and it sees my WiFi and connects. In his office, his WiFi is seen by my cellphone but not the laptop. Can anyone make any sense of this? I updated his computer at my home and checked for Network drivers, etc. It just doesn’t see his WiFi  in his office.

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Hello, seems like your PC ignores it. Dont know what the technician did, but first of all, on affected PC, I would try to unhide this wifi.

Open cmd.exe with administrator rights.
type
netsh wlan delete filter permission=block ssid=Name networktype=infrastructure

Note: REPLACE Name with your WiFi name (SSID). If your SSID has space in the name, plce it in quotes,
example:
netsh wlan delete filter permission=block ssid=”My Wifi” networktype=infrastructure
Maybe this will help, let us know.

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Is it possible that the network the laptop cannot see is on the 5 GHz band, but the laptop only has a 2.4 GHz wifi card?  It used to be common for laptops (and routers) to have only 2.4 GHz radios, but most new gear is dual-band. The 2.4 GHz band is also used by bluetooth, baby monitors, and other things, on top of the dozens of wireless routers that may be around, so it’s gotten horribly crowded in some spots. This could result in speeds far slower than expected, among other things.

Perhaps when the tech did something with the modem, he turned off the 2.4 GHz access point. Normally the access point would have 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz with the same SSID (the name of the access point that you see when you’re looking at available networks), and the person connecting to the network would never see what the frequency is. The laptop, tablet, or phone connecting to the access point would choose to connect to the 2.4 or 5 GHz radio based on signal strength and whatever other factors it looks at, transparently to the user.

If the tech turned off the 2.4 GHz radio, the access point would appear to be gone to a laptop that had only a 2.4 Ghz radio, but devices that have dual band radios would never see the difference.

It is also possible that the 2.4 GHz radio had the SSID changed to something else, perhaps the default for the access point.

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I agree that Wi-Fi frequencies are the most likely explanation. The laptop is probably only capable of 2.4Ghz.

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Get your phone out at his work and view available networks.
Does this tally with the laptop?

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

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