Yet another "unidentified network / limited access" thread....help!!

dictoresno · 18 Jan 2012

ive been searching here all night and on other forums and have tried just about everything. so here goes. all was working perfectly fine yesterday. i brought my netbook to work as usual to connect to our unsecured wifi network....never an issue. i started getting "limited access" and "unidentified network" messages. apparently, after a brief search of the internet, its a common and troublesome thing. i tried EVERYTHING i could find on google and other forums about it.

Hardware: Acer Aspire One D260 netbook, Atheros WLAN with up-to-date driver.

What i have tried with NO success:
1.) disable / re-enable the wireless card
2.) update, rollback the driver for it
3.) confirm the properties for the IPv4 and IPv6 were set to auto detect
4.) ran winipconfig, reset winsock, release and renew IP.....etc. all of the command line functions i could find
5.) system restore to 5 days ago

when i get all of my ip info for the computer, it is showing the ip for the wireless adapter is 169.254.xx.xx which from my reading is an erroneous address. when connected to the same network via iphone, it shows a proper 192.169.2xx.xx ip address.

ive tried everything and cant get it to work. i CANT reset the router since i dont have access to it. but then again, since my iphone connects to it properly, so should the computer. i will try to connect to my home network shortly when i get home. any other ideas short of reinstalling windows and WHY does this happen???

solarmystic · 18 Jan 2012

Hmm.. can you try inputting the the IPV4 address in the properties of your wireless card manually?

I find that this forcing of manual IP settings often helps alleviate this unidentified network issue that happens occasionally on some networks i connect to..

For example:-

In your IP Version 4 Properties box:-

Set the IP to 192.168.2xx.xx (fill up the xxx with the same numbers as your network, e.g if your gateway is 192.168.220.2, you IP should be 192.168.220.27, 27 being the manual allocation)

Set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0

and lastly set the default gateway to 192.169.2xx.xx (Fill up the xxx with your network gateway numbers)

If you want you can also set the Preferred DNS server address to that of your gateway

Try the above and see how it goes..

Hope that helps...

EDIT: I forgot to read the part that mentioned you're on a network at work which means you may need to get the Default Gateway and DNS addresses from your IT guy. Also they may not allow manual IP allocations beyond that which have been allocated by the DHCP.. So.. YMMV..

Also, i believe you can also acquire the required numbers from your iPhone's IP address display i think...

dictoresno · 18 Jan 2012

thanks for the quick reply. im at home now and the wireless network is working perfectly on my home wifi/router. could work have seen that i was logged onto the network and firewalled my adapters ip in order to restrict access?

at least its safe to say my computer isnt the issue. maybe just a fluke with their router which needs to be power cycled.