Windows 7: No Internet Connectivity At Some Wifi Locations

I am having a problem with my Toshiba NB505 Netbook - running Windows 7 Starter. I can connect fine at home to wifi- and also at my local public library. However I was unable to connect at a motel I was at recently - and had the same problem when I visited a different local library.

To be more exact, I was able to connect ok at these 2 locations - but there was no internet access. From reading, I suspect a 'DNS' issue of some sort, but I don't know how to go about remedying it.

Can someone please help?

Thank you.

If you have DNS failures at certain spots, you can fill in some known good DNS hosts like 8.8.8.8 (Google) to get around whatever the broken value is.

You'll have to hand fill in the rest of the stuff that DHCP from the WiFi unit gave you by hand as well. You can get that by opening a dos prompt and typing in "ipconfig"

Then hand fill in the ip address, netmask and gateway, but use 8.8.8.8 for the DNS in your adapter TCP/IP settings it should work.

You can also do it entirely from the command line using this to get interface names:
netsh interface ip show config

Then use this to set just the DNS:
netsh interface ip set dns "WiFi Connection" static 8.8.8.8

The "WiFi Connection" value will be the name of your wifi adapter, whatever that is, change it to match what you found using the first command...

Thanks fseal. Below is what returned from my ipconfig:



Which one is the value for my WiFi Connection?

The one labelled "Wireless LAN Adapter". it's name for setting DNS would be "Wireless Network Connection"

Thanks fseal. I'll give it a try.

I was hoping that there was a way to change a setting somewhere so that this would be resolved on the fly automatically somehow.

Well still not sure that that's the problem...

If it is, then no, everywhere you go there is the chance that someone has their DHCP set up wrong or badly or is on an ISP that's crap and makes using it difficult. Though I do find that DNS issues abound using random connections at hotels and such and using 8.8.8.8 (easy to remember) fixes the problem right quick sometimes

So I typed: netsh interface ip set dns "Wireless Network Connection" static 8.8.8.8

Did I do it right (including the quotes etc.)? After I did this, I did end up having internet access, but as soon as I attempted to open a site - BOOM - "No Internet Access".

Make any sense?

Well it could be so many things. Possibly by using the google dns the wifi ping to test for connectivity started working (pings Microsoft Corporation: Software, Smartphones, Online, Games, Cloud Computing, IT Business Technology, Downloads or something, I don't know for sure). But then after that if the WiFi hotspot you are using has any other sort of filtering on it it could cause all kinds of other issues :/

If you can "ping www.microsoft.com" or "ping www.google.com", then your net connection (and DNS) are ok. But routers or ISPs can block anything they want to based on destination or source as they see fit :/

I assume that your signal strength is good? A signal strength of 2 bars or less can be iffy any time, coming and going minute by minute...

Signal strength could have been an issue. Next time I'm there I'll try to find a stronger signal and see.

Hey seal, take a look at the thread below. Particularly where the OP had an IT friend of his change an option to generate a new DNS automatically everytime he connected. (Does this make any sense to you?)

Link:
WIFI connects but unable to open Internet

Well that setting should be the normal setting for your wifi adapter already.

You could check your IP settings for your wifi connection to make sure that you don't have a fixed DNS already entered (OR you could set a fixed DNS to 8.8.8.8 and it'll work everywhere).

What was happening to that other guy was he probably had the fixed DNS of his home ISP set in his wifi (Somehow) and so of course that wouldn't work anywhere away from home. I wouldn't expect that to be a very common problem though...