HELP!!! lost wireless signals

Yesterday my laptop was picking up wireless signals with no problem (at home, at Uni). I took a train ride home with the laptop and now cannot get any signals at all.

Anyone have any ideas at all?? We only have on desktop computer, the router is next to it. DH is on the desktop so I am without internet unless I boot him off!

HELP!!!!

A few questions:
1 - Does your laptop have an external switch to turn wireless on or off?
2 - Do you have Vista on the laptop? (For a while with my new laptop, which runs Vista I had to manually turn on my wireless card through Vista even though the external switch is turned on.)
3 - Are you using an internal wireless car or card slot?  (You may need to update the drivers on the internal one?)   

1 - Does your laptop have an external switch to turn wireless on or off?

You don't know how many times I've accidentally turned my external switch off! Hopefully, that's all it is!

You don't know how many times I've accidentally turned my external switch off! Hopefully, that's all it is!

No idea. I've never turned one on before but that doesnt' mean anything. Will go have a look...

Not running Vista. Why would we need to suddenly update things? In the morning I had wireless, by evening I didn't!

Had a look, there does not appear to be a switch for the wireless.

Anyone???!!!

Help!!!!!!!!

Had a look, there does not appear to be a switch for the wireless.

Mine doesn't say it's a wireless switch. It's just a tiny way-too-easy-to-nudge slidey back and forth switch type thing on the front of the computer near the slot thing for a camera disc (obviously, I'm not up on the techno-lingo). But there is a little light that lights up when it's switched to on. Do you have anything like that?

Don't think so. I'll look again...

Hi Balmerhon

Very difficult to diagnose over a web forum but....

1. Try 'restarting' the router. Power it off and leave it off for 1 minute, then power it back on.

2. From the desktop PC, can you login to the router's setup page and check all the wireless settings are correct and most importantly switched on. Did you previously have WEP (not very good but better than nothing) or WPA security setup? if so, re-enter the 'key' in the setup page and 'save'

3. On your laptop - Is there a little icon which shows 'wireless connections'? if you hover over it, does it pickup your wireless connection signal? or is it picking up 'joe bloggs' one from somewhere nearby? open the wireless settings  - you may have specific program that looks after wireless networks in which case open that. It may be that your laptop is set to 'automatically connect to other networks if it can't find your 'home' signal. You may need to hunt around for this setting, becuase I don't know which program your are using or if it's the inbuilt Windows (I presume you are on XP?) one. Set it to 'connect to Infrastructure networks only - this means it wont hunt for public and/or open networks nearby - only your one.

4. You may need to go back to the router itself and ensure the 'broadcast SSID' tag is on, this is the signal 'identifier' of YOUR wireless network and should have been changed from the 'default' when you first bought it!

give the above a go, there's a lot more that 'could' be wrong, broken drivers, signal interference, incorrect settings, MTU figures and tweaks etc etc, but they start getting a little complex to discuss here.

Hopefully you'll be sorted !

Cheers! DtM! West London & Slough UK!

Thanks Dennis, I was hoping you would check in! I'll look into this all tomorrow... off to bed now!

OK. We turned out router off and back on. Nada.

We never had to do anything to my laptop (one year old in a month) to pick up wireless signals before. They just showed up. A little balloon would come up from the bottom right menu bar telling us wireless networks are being detected. When DH set up ours, he didn't have to do anything to the laptop to pick it up. We live in the city centre and also next to a small apt building with students. Usually we pick up 4-5 networks. Now I get none at all. So it's clearly something with my laptop.

So now I guess it's actually something pretty serious?

Do you have a wireless icon in the bottom right corner? If so, can you right click on it and select 'View Available Wireless Networks'? From there, I sometimes have to de-select and then re-select my network (provided it shows up, of course). Give it a try.

Do you have a wireless icon in the bottom right corner? If so, can you right click on it and select 'View Available Wireless Networks'? From there, I sometimes have to de-select and then re-select my network (provided it shows up, of course). Give it a try.

I can't get anything to show up by doing that. I've used that icon before as occasionally it would pick up a neighbor's network instead of ours so I'd have to change it. Normally I'd see 3-4 networks in range there, including ours.

First off - what's the make & model of your laptop.
Second - what operating system do you have on it?
Third - is your wireless card internal or external (inserted into the PCI slot)? 
Also, did it come with separate software specifically for it? - If so, something might've become corrupt or accidentally deleted possibly needing the drivers to be reinstalled.   

First off - what's the make & model of your laptop.
Second - what operating system do you have on it?
Third - is your wireless card internal or external (inserted into the PCI slot)? 
Also, did it come with separate software specifically for it? - If so, something might've become corrupt or accidentally deleted possibly needing the drivers to be reinstalled.   

1. It's a Gateway something or other - I'll have to go check the model.

2. Windows XP

3. Not sure. We never did anything to make it wireless. We bought it in the US, took it home, and found we picked up a wireless network as soon as we started it up. I'll see if I can find anything in the gumph they gave us with it about the wireless and post back.

I have  been having one other issue... Firefox went totally wonky on me in the last few days as well. So I'm going to run my virus stuff and reinstall Firefox but I'm wondering if the 2 could be related at all? I can run IE relatively well though so I'm probably just grasping at straws here.

Hi Balmerhon,

It's very difficult to pinpoint over a forum like this

Have you had a chance to check your settings on the wireless router itself? you must have your own SSID and security (WEP or WPA) setup - this is so that you have a 'reference' point from which to work - at this stage from what you've described you 'could' have been (illegally) surfing on someones else's wireless signal !!

There's so many possible problem points though - if you take you laptop to uni, does it pick up the 'free' and 'legal' connection there? if so, that means your internal wireless card is 'working' and that you need to sort out your home wireless router settings out. If it doesn't pickup signals at uni, could you pop it over to the IT department and see if you can snare one of the uni IT network Tech guys to have a quick look over it?  it could be something as 'simple' as the system is now looking at 'infrastructure' networks 'ONLY' (settings liek that can 'flick' over for a variety of technical reasons when you haven't purposely made the change) and just needs your home router setting up to match (which i recommend!) or you change back to the previous config..

Could be your wirless card has packed up, could be a driver issue, a reinstall might work, could be a hardware conflict....  etc etc...

AS you mention Firefox has 'gone wonky' that does lead me to suspect you may have spyware or malware issues and/or general system issues which would need cleaning/resolving etc for the overall stability of your laptop.

Cheers for now! DtM! West London & Slough UK!