Wi-Fi cannot reconnect after coming back from sleep

[Joe Morris]

It's not a constant problem, it's a problem that occurs in specific
situations. The wifi works otherwise.

Agreed...but I've seen too many computer problems where the ultimate trigger
was a misconfiguration that acts as an IED that some other component,
perhaps quite logically distant, eventually trips over. A screwed-up
antenna connection, for example, might cause problems while trying to
re-establish a connection during wakeup.

I'll agree that it's not the first place I would check, but the comment
about the problem beginning after the box was returned from vendor service
makes it a possibility.

Joe

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I have a desktop that had a similar issue, as well as a laptop. Turned
out that the desktop's drivers and BIOS settings were involved. A BIOS
rev and newer drivers solved that problem.

The last time I bothered to really get into the no WiFi no Ethernet
problem after sleep, it turned out that the problems were both driver
version and chip dependent, with possible BIOS setting involvement.
Evidently, the networking chip was not getting fully reset until a real
power cycle occurred (Turn Off, not the other possibilities.) Hibernate
seemed to be the most common power state that was involved. Overall,
this is sort of an old problem, going back more than ten years. Part of
the issue had to do with corporate use and what they wanted to occur
when a networked P/C was walked away from while still on.
Some of the laptops may use a USB type interface to "talk to" the WiFi
stuff, and as a result, USB power related behavior settings may also be
involved.

I'm wondering if maybe the guys in the service center just updated my
BIOS as one of those things that technicians always do blindly, for any
sort of hardware problem? It's not likely that I check the BIOS version
all that often. I couldn't even tell what the previous BIOS version is,
if it was changed. I'll do a little investigating here.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Paul]

I'm wondering if maybe the guys in the service center just updated my
BIOS as one of those things that technicians always do blindly, for any
sort of hardware problem? It's not likely that I check the BIOS version
all that often. I couldn't even tell what the previous BIOS version is,
if it was changed. I'll do a little investigating here.

Yousuf Khan

The BIOS version might change, if they changed out the motherboard.

Paul

 

[Yousuf Khan]

The BIOS version might change, if they changed out the motherboard.

I don't think they changed out the motherboard, just the LCD screen.

Yousuf Khan

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

I don't think they changed out the motherboard, just the LCD screen.

Yousuf Khan

Maybe they changed it IN? Or even just changed it?

(-:

 

[RJK]

Yes, the WiFi adapter is constantly showing the spinning wheel saying that
it is trying to obtain an IP address, until it times out.

When I tried the "repair", it seems to work sometimes, and sometimes not.
Recently all attempts at repair have come back without working.

Yousuf Khan

"sometimes works" ....sounds a bit like a signal strength and/or, more
likely, a signal quality problem. My CR620 used to get the "spinning wheel"
for long times, even when notification area wi-fi icon claims "good" signal
strength, ...move nearer to wi-fi/router ?
My house has hugely thick old stone walls, and had to replace
wi-fi/router/adsl modem with a better performing model, and put a bigger
antennae on it, as it's located in the out-building beside my house.
....also had to survery which channels were in use near my house, and change
my channel !

regards, Richard

 

[RJK]

Yes, the WiFi adapter is constantly showing the spinning wheel saying that
it is trying to obtain an IP address, until it times out.

When I tried the "repair", it seems to work sometimes, and sometimes not.
Recently all attempts at repair have come back without working.

Yousuf Khan

"sometimes works" ....sounds a bit like a signal strength and/or, more
likely, a signal quality problem. My CR620 used to get the "spinning wheel"
for long times, even when notification area wi-fi icon claims "good" signal
strength, ...move nearer to wi-fi/router ?
My house has hugely thick old stone walls, and had to replace
wi-fi/router/adsl modem with a better performing model, and put a bigger
antennae on it, as it's located in the out-building beside my house.
....also had to survery which channels were in use near my house, and change
my channel !

regards, Richard

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

When I tried the "repair", it seems to work sometimes, and sometimes not.
Recently all attempts at repair have come back without working.

Yousuf Khan

"sometimes works" ....sounds a bit like a signal strength and/or, more
likely, a signal quality problem. My CR620 used to get the "spinning wheel" []
...also had to survery which channels were in use near my house, and change
my channel !

regards, Richard

Have you (or a neighbour) recently added something new which works in
the 24 GHz band? If it's a data network, then it'll show up in scans,
but if it's something else - such as a wireless security camera - it
won't, but will still reduce performance on one or more channels.

 

[Char Jackson]

Have you (or a neighbour) recently added something new which works in
the 24 GHz band? If it's a data network, then it'll show up in scans,
but if it's something else - such as a wireless security camera - it
won't, but will still reduce performance on one or more channels.

You need to make your decimal points a tad bit bigger. That almost
looks like 24 GHz rather than 2.4 GHz.

 

[RJK]

When I tried the "repair", it seems to work sometimes, and sometimes
not.
Recently all attempts at repair have come back without working.

Yousuf Khan

"sometimes works" ....sounds a bit like a signal strength and/or, more
likely, a signal quality problem. My CR620 used to get the "spinning
wheel" []
...also had to survery which channels were in use near my house, and
change
my channel !

regards, Richard

Have you (or a neighbour) recently added something new which works in the
24 GHz band? If it's a data network, then it'll show up in scans, but if
it's something else - such as a wireless security camera - it won't, but
will still reduce performance on one or more channels.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
before it is understood." - Fortunes

I did recently fit a Swann security camera but, bought the one further up
the range that specifically claimed to not interfere with 2.4ghz wifi, or
was that,
itself, (the camera and receiver), were not prone to interference from wifi
? I forget which, ...anyhoo it was a Swann ADW200

....and Dads PC in the house is the one with the scanning software in it
which detects all wifi's in the area, and also shows all 2.4ghz signals that
are not wifi, and which could be interefering with the 13 or so wifi
channels, I was using one of the 3? that don't overlap, and had to change to
a different one, as there was a signal in the area that was causing
intereference, (not my camera btw), ....and now all is lovely !

regards, Richard

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

You need to make your decimal points a tad bit bigger. That almost
looks like 24 GHz rather than 2.4 GHz.

Oops, that would be a tad more millimetric than I meant (-:!

 

[Yousuf Khan]

"sometimes works" ....sounds a bit like a signal strength and/or, more
likely, a signal quality problem. My CR620 used to get the "spinning wheel"
for long times, even when notification area wi-fi icon claims "good" signal
strength, ...move nearer to wi-fi/router ?
My house has hugely thick old stone walls, and had to replace
wi-fi/router/adsl modem with a better performing model, and put a bigger
antennae on it, as it's located in the out-building beside my house.
...also had to survery which channels were in use near my house, and change
my channel !

I have done that too, didn't make a difference. Anyways, the problem
seems to have disappeared on its own, I haven't had this problem in
quite some time.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

My laptop has just started experiencing a strange problem that never
existed before. When I put it to sleep, and come back, the Wi-Fi
connection cannot reobtain the IP address from the router. The problem
doesn't exist if I restart the laptop, or if the laptop comes back from
hibernate rather than sleep.

Yousuf Khan

Here's an update on the problem. I'm not sure if this problem is totally
solved yet, but it happens but much less frequently now.

I think maybe there is a possibility that if you change some aspect of
the identity of a wireless network, no matter how minor, that it might
make Windows confused. For example, if you change the password, or even
if you change the password mechanism (say from WEP to WPA to WPA2,
etc.), then some aspect of the old network will stay saved, alongside
the new one. And then it comes time to reconnect to the network, it
can't decide whether to use the old profile or the new one. So if you
make any sort of change to the Wi-Fi properties, it might be best to
delete the existing profile of it, and recreate it from scratch.

Remember that the identity of the network is not determined by its
user-readable SSID, but its binary BSSID, which is a type of wireless
MAC address which can never be changed by user settings. The Windows
profile is set based on that BSSID, so even if you change its SSID,
Windows will ignore that and match the network to its BSSID. So deleting
all previous profiles for your network is important, even if you think
you've changed the SSID so there can be no possible confusion between
the old network and new network profiles.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

My laptop has just started experiencing a strange problem that never
existed before. When I put it to sleep, and come back, the Wi-Fi
connection cannot reobtain the IP address from the router. The problem
doesn't exist if I restart the laptop, or if the laptop comes back from
hibernate rather than sleep.

Yousuf Khan

Okay, just an update on this old issue. I think the issue is finally
resolved, and again, like my previous mysterious issue about Powerline
Ethernet (which some of you may have remembered, got solved by simply
moving the plug to another outlet about 4 feet away), this one was
solved just as stupidly. I backed up my laptop, intent on taking it back
to Best Buy to have them change out the inboard Wi-Fi adapter. On such a
major repair, I expected that they would probably want to reinstall the
OS back to factory defaults.

Took it in, explained to the nice Geek Squad guy what was happening, and
the randomness of it. He listened and told me honestly that Toshiba may
just look at the laptop, find that the problem may not occur when they
test it, and return it completely unchanged, and call it fixed. So it's
not worth sending it back. He said, he could take it in himself, and
open it up, fiddle with the connectors and make sure it's tight and
that's it. I told him to go ahead and do that, and I took the laptop
back home. Now about 3 days later, the laptop has been behaving
properly, it obtains its IP address everytime now, within a few
seconds!!! Again, no parts were swapped out, no drivers were updated,
everything is just working after touching the card.

Friggin computers!

Yousuf Khan

 

[Wolf K]

Okay, just an update on this old issue. I think the issue is finally
resolved, and again, like my previous mysterious issue about Powerline
Ethernet (which some of you may have remembered, got solved by simply
moving the plug to another outlet about 4 feet away), this one was
solved just as stupidly. I backed up my laptop, intent on taking it back
to Best Buy to have them change out the inboard Wi-Fi adapter. On such a
major repair, I expected that they would probably want to reinstall the
OS back to factory defaults.

Took it in, explained to the nice Geek Squad guy what was happening, and
the randomness of it. He listened and told me honestly that Toshiba may
just look at the laptop, find that the problem may not occur when they
test it, and return it completely unchanged, and call it fixed. So it's
not worth sending it back. He said, he could take it in himself, and
open it up, fiddle with the connectors and make sure it's tight and
that's it. I told him to go ahead and do that, and I took the laptop
back home. Now about 3 days later, the laptop has been behaving
properly, it obtains its IP address everytime now, within a few
seconds!!! Again, no parts were swapped out, no drivers were updated,
everything is just working after touching the card.

Friggin computers!

Yousuf Khan

Most contacts inside the computer are mere copper, whose oxide is an
insulator. So a little wiggle can easily break through that
non-conducting layer and restore the connection.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Most contacts inside the computer are mere copper, whose oxide is an
insulator. So a little wiggle can easily break through that
non-conducting layer and restore the connection.

Yup, looks like the case here too.

Yousuf Khan