Cannot connect to public WiFi

We go to one particular campground frequently. We have two laptops and a tablet. One of the laptops and the tablet have no problem connecting to the wifi, but the other laptop (newer than the first) will not connect. It finds the signal, and like the OP gets says it cannot connect. We tried everything but finally went out and bought a cheap USB Wifi adapter, plugged that in and the connection through that at this campground works fine on this laptop. Everywhere else the laptop's own wifi works just fine. Since we come back to this campground several times a year, the $8 usb wifi receiver was worth not having the frustration of getting the connection to work.

The trick I use with our Windows 8.1 laptops when they refuse to connect to a wifi is to go to Network and Sharing Center/Change Adapter Settings and I right click to disable the wifi adapter. After it is disabled, I enable it. Works 90% of the time. I think this pretty much does the same thing as the IPCONFIG actions.

next time you are connected, do a "ipconfig" and send us the results

The following is what I had to do when I could connect to the wifi but not get to the internet. This is set up steps that could be done manually, but this does them all. I don't know which step fixed the problem, but everything internet wise worked after the reboot step.

Save from @Echo On to del %0, as flush.bat to your desktop. Right click on the flush.bat file to run it as Administrator.

Your computer will reboot itself.


@Echo on
pushd\windows\system32\drivers\etc
attrib -h -s -r hosts
echo 127.0.0.1 localhost>HOSTS
attrib +r +h +s hosts
popd
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /flushdns
netsh winsock reset all
netsh int ip reset all
shutdown -r -t 1
del %0

Save as flush.bat to your desktop. Right click on the flush.bat file to run it as Administrator.

Your computer will reboot itself

One of the problems that may apply at least in some parks is the park's router/DCHP package..

With older systems (Windows systems) if I did not get an IP address assigned it would give me an informative message.. With 8.1 it just says "Connected" but there is an exclamation mark on the icon (yellow)

Figure out how to view the adapter status. (I am wired just now so that's not easy) and see what your IP address is.. There is one that is a "Default" address, I forget what it is but am googling. One of the "Automatic, I can not get and address from the host" IP addresses is: 169.254.0.1 if my search is right (Looks right to me) this is never a valid address.

if this happens look for the "Default Gateway" if it is something like oh, say 192.168.1.0 Then you can try manually assigning an IP address.. How to do this varies a bit from adapter to operating system so I won't go into the detail but

Try an address (in this case) of something like 192.168.1.201 Usually that is OUTSIDE the DCHP range of the router and will connect you,, The first three numbers (Called Octets since they are represented by 2 hex digits or 8 bits) should be the same as the gateway, For the third I like to use 200+ when I do this (200-250) 255 is reserved 254 may be the router. numbers larger than 255 are not valid.

I have done this for many folks over the years

Many Parks simply take a Linksys small office/home router out of the box and plug it in .. in one park I frequent (This was 2 or 3 managers ago) the SSID was not even changed, it was still LINKSYS,, I was helping folks every day to connect, finally I decided to do something and tried the default admin password for that box.. It worked (no I won't give it away) reset the number of DCHP addresses from 50-100,, Cut way down on the number of folks I had to help.

One was a woman.. (The very next day) I showed her the problem.

When the park first plugged it in most of the users, like me, were using laptops but due to advances in portable electronics we now have game machines, PDAs and .. Oh here's one.. Suzie's I-Phone.

Yup, You guessed it,, She was Suzie.

I had one adapter that presented N APs as G. As it was a G adapter it wouldn't connect.

Keep a eye open for the WIFI repair crew in the park. They are a good bunch and can probably help you. They are not in the park every day, but keep watching for them. You can also ask at the office if they are in the park.

YC 1 wrote:
rt click on your wi fi strength bar, click, open network and sharing, click "manage wireless networks", Click the one you are trying to use and remove it. Heck, remove most or all of them. Just for good measure reboot your computer. The start the picking of the wireless hot spot again and when the type of system comes up pick public. It might seem like it is doing nothing so be patient. It can take a minute for this screen to show up.

Nope, didn't fix it. It even says it has internet access, but won't bring up any site.

YC 1 wrote:
How long have you had this problem?

Did you do "restore to earlier time", ?

Does a screen ever pop up that ask what kind of network is it? Public, Private, etc.

New computer, so problem from day 1. No, the screen never popped up asking what type of network it is. It just connects the the network and says "Signal Strength: Excellent"

powderman426 wrote:
There is a simple solution for this issue of not able to get connected inspite of having connection: Goto Run:c:\temp . Here you have to delete all the files/folders that present in this temp folder.(don't leave any single file/folder) in this directory. Now, disconnect that internet connection which is annoying you.. press refresh of F5 on the desktop screen and then try to connect to that internet connection back, for your surprise you will find the internet connection on with its full speed. This is for 8.1

The other thing is to briefly shut down your antivirus as it can block access.

Thank you very much for your suggestions, but this did not work either. When running the network troubleshooter on this connection, the resulting message is "Windows can't communicate with the device or resource (primary DNS server). This is the error message I Googled and found suggestions duplicating what the Dell tech recommended.

Although several forums had questions on this problem, no one posted a solution that worked for anyone with the problem.