Keep having to enable/disable wireless connections when changing locations

[ls62]

Hi,

Sometime within the past week or two my wireless connections will not automatically connect to the local wireless connection and give me internet access. It seems to connect but does not get a new ip configuration from dhcp.

For the previous year that I've had this laptop I did not have this problem. Other than MS updates there have been no other software additions.

I use my laptop at home and at work. While at either of these locations I can close my laptop and when I open it again it will reconnect to that wireless with internet access. When I close my laptop go to another location it sees the wireless connection, connects but will not give me internet access. I get 'local only' access.

I have to disable the wireless connection and then re-enable the adapter for it to connect properly.

This is a Lenovo P580 laptop with Win 7 professional and a Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2200. I've checked and I do have the latest driver (15.0.0.75)for that device from Lenovo.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Lee

 

[goombawaho]

Have you tried the Intel drivers? They are later. 15.8
Link

If that failes, try running with only with the "windows wireless network manager" if you using some type of Lenovo connection manager. You know, it's built into windows.

 

[linney]

You could try a System Restore and go back a couple of weeks where things worked correctly. If System Restore fails to fix the problem you can return to the present via the "Undo" option created by using System Restore.


How to repair the operating system and how to restore the operating system configuration to an earlier point in time in Windows Vista (or 7, or 8).

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936212/#appliesto

 

[Sympology]

Is it running the Lenovo Network manager thing? I had a similar issue with mine. Uninstalled and it was fine from then on.

Stu..

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

 

[ls62]

Hi

I wasn't sure if installing the newest Non-Lenovo approved driver would mess anything up so I didn't do that. I noticed this morning that when I was a work and tried to ping one of our servers it returned a ipv6 ip address. I thought that was odd since it never did that before. I when into the Wireless network connection properties and uncheck the ipv6 option.

One other thing I did notice when going from work to home. Even though it connects to my home wireless router it doesn't seem to renew to get the new network dhcp information. When I looked at the status of my home connections it still had my work ip address, dns and wins ip's. When switching wireless connections it should get the new network information. I'm sure this is the root or symptom that is causing my problem... just know sure why it stopped workign all of a sudden. We'll see how the ipv6 change affects this.

Once I did that and restarted it seemed to fix several issues... at least for now. I'll see later tonight when I get home if it reconnects to my home wireless correctly.

Linney... thanks for the suggestion on doing a system restore. Definiately something I will consider, but I'm sort of hesitant since I don't want to have to worry about backing up stuff and restoring changes that I need. I think if I can't resolve it any other way that will be the route I will do.

I'm not running the Lenovo Network manager.

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I'll keep you posted.
Lee

 

[ls62]

Still haven't figure this out yet. Odd,If I do ipconfig /release then ipconfig /renew by connection gets updated and it works fine. Seems like something is wrong that when changing wireless connections it doesn't automatically try to renew or refresh the connection even though it sees and connects to the new site.

Still trying to figure this out without having to do system restore.

Thanks

 

[cmeagan656]

Is the DHCP Client service running on your computer? Is it set to Automatic?

Hope this helps.

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[ls62]

Hi

DHCP client services is running and set to Automatic..

I did find the problem/solution, at least I think as it has worked so far.

I found some other formum that referenced setting the "dhcpmediasense" registry setting once I enabled this when I came home and connected to my wireless it automatically renewed by ip settings and I had internet access.

If you want to read the article here's the link to it:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...y/563f883f-dbb2-4734-b64d-253f75cb4798?page=2

I also found some other sites referencing this and showing how to set this using a batch file. Here's what I used to set it instead of using regedit.

netsh interface ipv4 set global dhcpmediasense=enable
netsh interface ipv6 set global dhcpmediasense=enable
pause

Thanks to everyone for your time and help.
Lee

 

[goombawaho]

Never heard of anyone having to do that for it to respond to changing wireless networks, but............... if it fixed it for you, good.

I thought our little wild time had just begun.