Laptop Suddenly Does Not Automatically Connect to my Wireless Network

[skuddle]

My Toshiba Windows 7 laptop was been working fine for the last several years using a wireless connection. I could fire it up and it would connect to the network without me doing anything. Today I moved the laptop two floors up and now it does not automatically connect to my router. Instead, the 5-bar icon appears in the System Tray with an exclamation point on top of it. When I click the 5-bar icon I'm told that an HP 2600 printer device is connected.

I had removed that HP2600 printer several months ago and the laptop was connecting just fine without it, so today I uninstalled all of the associated HP2600 software and restarted the computer. I still have the problem i.e. the HP2600 printer still shows as being connected.

How can I get the laptop to automatically connect to the router, without me doing anything other than restart the laptop?

 

[file3456]

Today I moved the laptop two floors up and now it does not automatically connect to my router.

This simple sounds like an out of range issue. You're simply too far away from the router. To verify this assumption bring the laptop back to where it was before and see if the exclamation mark goes away and you can browse.

If it turns out that's the issue you'll have to use a range extender for the wireless network. It needs to be placed half way between you and the router. If you need help picking one out let me know if WiFi range is in fact the issue first.

The HP2600 printer has nothing to do with this. I say that because the exclamation mark is the indicator saying your PC can't ping a Microsoft IP address (Actually an Akamai server IP). If it can't do that Windows assumes you have no Internet connectivity. So on its face it sounds like you're out of WiFi range.

I think that printer connection message just means it's connected to the driver or some stupid thing software wise. Total misnomer on the idea of being actually "connected" to the networked printer.

 

[skuddle]

Thank you for your reply and your ideas. I spend a couple of hours yesterday going round and round an in and out of computer-related rabbit holes, and I finally got the laptop to automatically connect to my wireless network. (BTY I have a decent router and can access it with the laptop from anywhere in the house and most of outside as well.)

As far as I can remember, while the laptop was upstairs I plugged into my router's Ethernet connection. The laptop would not connect to that either, so I unplugged the Ethernet connection and (I think) I rebooted the laptop. Then it did connect to the wireless connection. Go figger...

I can't recall what I did to get rid of the HP Printer stuff though.

I have one more problem with the laptop and will post it a bit later.
Thanks again for your help!

 

[file3456]

That sounds like an anti-virus/firewall issue, driver issue or TCP/IP stack issue. To rule that out I'd boot in safe mode WITH networking and see if WiFi works. If it does we can now discern it's something software wise. Since most software ISN'T loaded in safe mode. Perhaps the anti-virus or something else would be the issue at this point. To get into safe mode (with networking in this case) reboot the PC and keep tapping the F8 key. You'd do this after BIOS loads, but it may be too fast.

Protip: Don't use the WPS button in WiFI. A skilled hacker (well, no skill required) can brute force those magic little WPS numbers. Worse yet, there are standard default numbers. And even IF you use a long and complicated WiFi password the WPS functionality withen the router or modem will allow one inside. So, you'd want to completely disable WPS functionality if at all possible.