Desktop PC showing "limited" on wifi extender, no internet connection
August 15, 2015 5:48 PM Subscribe
I have really thick walls and lots of interfering things in the walls (a chimney, for example) between me and my wifi router, so a few years back I got an extender so the signal could reach my bedroom consistently. It's been working great until recently.
I have a Netgear Wireless-N WNR2000 router and a Netgear Universal WiFi range extender WN3000RP. I have a new as of May Dell PC that I recently upgraded to Win 10 from Win 8.1.
I can't pinpoint when it started happening, and it's possible that it's been since I got the new PC so back in Win 8.1 days, but it seemed that the extender stopped being able to connect to the internet. I get five bars of signal, but that's not really helpful when it's not connecting to the wifi. I didn't have any time or patience to troubleshoot until now, so I have been using the less-reliable main router entirely for a couple of months.
Now that I am really REALLY sick of having bad access, I decided to tackle my problem tonight. I did a factory reset on the extender. I unplugged it for a while. I plugged it back in, used the WPS push-button, and it's connected! Except my desktop still tells me it has "limited" access. The rub is that my phone now connects to the extender just fine and gets good internet access. So I am assuming that means it's a desktop issue. I go to Network and Sharing Center and click on Change Adapter Settings and then Diagnose this Connection and it says '"Wi-Fi" doesn't have a valid IP connection'. I clicked on view detailed information and if that's helpful I can paste that in below.
I've searched and seen a few suggestions to delete the wifi adapter altogether in device manager and reboot, but I am a wee bit nervous to do that. How would I get the device driver to update if there's no internet? Can I/should I back something up somewhere first?
Please assume that I am technically reasonably competent and that I RTFM, but that I've never entirely grokked setting up a home network so I do what the manual suggests almost always. Also please take into account that May was the first time I had Win 8, and release day +1 was my first exposure to Win 10, so I am still fumbling around trying to find control panel.
PLEASE help me improve my quality of life! I can't keep resetting the router and/or rebooting every single night.
I have a Netgear Wireless-N WNR2000 router and a Netgear Universal WiFi range extender WN3000RP. I have a new as of May Dell PC that I recently upgraded to Win 10 from Win 8.1.
I can't pinpoint when it started happening, and it's possible that it's been since I got the new PC so back in Win 8.1 days, but it seemed that the extender stopped being able to connect to the internet. I get five bars of signal, but that's not really helpful when it's not connecting to the wifi. I didn't have any time or patience to troubleshoot until now, so I have been using the less-reliable main router entirely for a couple of months.
Now that I am really REALLY sick of having bad access, I decided to tackle my problem tonight. I did a factory reset on the extender. I unplugged it for a while. I plugged it back in, used the WPS push-button, and it's connected! Except my desktop still tells me it has "limited" access. The rub is that my phone now connects to the extender just fine and gets good internet access. So I am assuming that means it's a desktop issue. I go to Network and Sharing Center and click on Change Adapter Settings and then Diagnose this Connection and it says '"Wi-Fi" doesn't have a valid IP connection'. I clicked on view detailed information and if that's helpful I can paste that in below.
I've searched and seen a few suggestions to delete the wifi adapter altogether in device manager and reboot, but I am a wee bit nervous to do that. How would I get the device driver to update if there's no internet? Can I/should I back something up somewhere first?
Please assume that I am technically reasonably competent and that I RTFM, but that I've never entirely grokked setting up a home network so I do what the manual suggests almost always. Also please take into account that May was the first time I had Win 8, and release day +1 was my first exposure to Win 10, so I am still fumbling around trying to find control panel.
PLEASE help me improve my quality of life! I can't keep resetting the router and/or rebooting every single night.
Oh, hell. inSSIDer used to be free but it looks like it isn't any more. Sorry about that. Anyway, just as an experiment try getting into your hub's controls and change the channel.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:18 PM on August 15, 2015
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:18 PM on August 15, 2015
Response by poster: Chocolate Pickle, but wouldn't that mean I couldn't use it at all? As I said, my iPhone connects to the extender and is able to connect to the internet. As another data point I got out the work laptop and it connects fine, in fact I am writing this from it using the extender. The work laptop uses Win7. So it means that the desktop is the problem, yes?
posted by clone boulevard at 11:04 PM on August 15, 2015
posted by clone boulevard at 11:04 PM on August 15, 2015
Also please take into account that May was the first time I had Win 8, and release day +1 was my first exposure to Win 10, so I am still fumbling around trying to find control panel.
Right-click on the Start Menu button to bring up a context menu. You'll see the link for the Control Panel near the bottom. (Screenshot)
I've searched and seen a few suggestions to delete the wifi adapter altogether in device manager and reboot, but I am a wee bit nervous to do that. How would I get the device driver to update if there's no internet? Can I/should I back something up somewhere first?
Corrupted drivers do sometimes make a mess of things. Deleting the adapter's drivers shouldn't require any backups, but you will want to have a copy of the drivers saved on your laptop in case you need to install them offline. How you do that depends on the adapter. Depending on the model and whether or not it's on board, it could be as easy as installing from an executable. or as (relatively) difficult as manually pointing Device Manager to a specific file. Let me know which (and if possible, the model number of your dongle/PC) and I'll try to give you the step-by-step.
One weird possibility is the BIOS/CMOs clock. I recently had issues transferring files to and from a media PC on my LAN because it's system time was out. It still connected to the internet, so the operating system could still fetch the time from an NTP server, which meant when I was logged in it displayed the right time. Despite that, it was invisible to every other device on the network until I corrected that BIOS clock. A similar thing happened to me when setting up some computers in a school lab a few years back.
When you boot your computer, hold down the F2 key until it enters system setup. You might have to navigate by keyboard. Every BIOS I've seen gives instructions in a sidebar on what buttons you need to press to navigate and change settings.
posted by timd at 12:19 AM on August 16, 2015
Right-click on the Start Menu button to bring up a context menu. You'll see the link for the Control Panel near the bottom. (Screenshot)
I've searched and seen a few suggestions to delete the wifi adapter altogether in device manager and reboot, but I am a wee bit nervous to do that. How would I get the device driver to update if there's no internet? Can I/should I back something up somewhere first?
Corrupted drivers do sometimes make a mess of things. Deleting the adapter's drivers shouldn't require any backups, but you will want to have a copy of the drivers saved on your laptop in case you need to install them offline. How you do that depends on the adapter. Depending on the model and whether or not it's on board, it could be as easy as installing from an executable. or as (relatively) difficult as manually pointing Device Manager to a specific file. Let me know which (and if possible, the model number of your dongle/PC) and I'll try to give you the step-by-step.
One weird possibility is the BIOS/CMOs clock. I recently had issues transferring files to and from a media PC on my LAN because it's system time was out. It still connected to the internet, so the operating system could still fetch the time from an NTP server, which meant when I was logged in it displayed the right time. Despite that, it was invisible to every other device on the network until I corrected that BIOS clock. A similar thing happened to me when setting up some computers in a school lab a few years back.
When you boot your computer, hold down the F2 key until it enters system setup. You might have to navigate by keyboard. Every BIOS I've seen gives instructions in a sidebar on what buttons you need to press to navigate and change settings.
posted by timd at 12:19 AM on August 16, 2015
Sounds like one of two things has happened: either your computer's wifi hardware has failed (I see this a fair bit) or its Windows wifi driver has gone wrong (any number of ways this can happen).
If you can boot from a Linux live CD with good hardware support like Knoppix and get a reliable Internet connection that way, it isn't the hardware.
posted by flabdablet at 6:29 AM on August 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
If you can boot from a Linux live CD with good hardware support like Knoppix and get a reliable Internet connection that way, it isn't the hardware.
posted by flabdablet at 6:29 AM on August 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
A friend of mine had something similar happen. For some reason she was getting an IP address from the router, but not DNS, so we just manually added the Google DNS to her config (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) and it started working.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:57 PM on August 16, 2015
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:57 PM on August 16, 2015
Maybe the iPhone uses 5GHz without any/much competition, but your PC is on a more crowded 2.6GHz channel.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:01 AM on August 17, 2015
posted by wenestvedt at 6:01 AM on August 17, 2015
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posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:16 PM on August 15, 2015