What to do if Wi-Fi on your laptop doesn't work?

It’s worth noting right away that there can be several reasons for this problem, and this article will highlight the most common difficulties that users encounter. The culprit in this situation may be the laptop itself or the router, so it is important to find the source of all the troubles. Or contact a service, for example in Moscow;

Checking the router for functionality

It’s probably not worth saying that before checking you need to make sure that the router is turned on and the Wi-Fi option is turned on? Still, check, maybe you just forgot to turn on Wi-Fi.

If, in addition to a laptop, you have a tablet, smartphone, or another laptop from which you can access the Internet, then try to catch your Wi-Fi network from another device. If you were able to connect to the network from it and web pages load properly, it means that the router is working as it should.

Turn on Wi-Fi on a laptop

It often happens that the user simply forgets to turn on Wi-Fi on the laptop itself. Beginners in this business also do not always realize that in order to catch a network, they need not only to enable Wi-Fi distribution on the router, but also to search for networks on the laptop.

This can be done in different ways, depending on the brand of laptop. Most often, Wi-Fi is turned on using a button, which is located next to the on/off button and others. If it is not there, you can see its presence on the side panels, next to the connectors.

You can also turn on Wi-Fi via hotkey combination. Consider a row of F-keys: they always have some kind of image indicating a particular function. A wireless network is usually depicted so that you recognize it. If you find such an icon, then press the key combination Fn + this F key.

examples:

Turn on wireless communication

But it’s not enough to turn on the adapter using a button: you also need to do it in the operating system itself. To do this, go here: Start > Control panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings (in the left panel).

You can often see here that next to “Wireless network"status is worth"Off" Right-click on this network and select “Insert».

In Windows 8, in addition to the above steps, you need to do the following:
In the right panel select Parameters > Change computer settings > Wireless network > Wireless network "On"

Install/reinstall the driver

If everything is turned on, but Wi-Fi does not want to work, it is possible that the driver has crashed or you forgot to install it after system reinstallation. Even if there is a driver, check to see if the driver can be updated and thereby solve the main problem. To do this, you need to go to the official website of the laptop manufacturer and find the Wi-Fi driver there.

Please note that if for a PC you need to search for a network card driver based on the manufacturer of that card, then you need to search for a Wi-Fi driver for a laptop on the laptop manufacturer’s website. Therefore, you should not enter queries such as “download driver for free” into a search engine. Download drivers only from the official website of the manufacturer! This is a 100% guarantee of the absence of viruses, Trojans and other malware.

Links to official websites of popular laptop manufacturers:

Asus - http://www.asus.com/ru/
Acer— http://www.acer.ru/ac/ru/RU/content/drivers
Lenovo - http://support.lenovo.com/ru_RU/downloads/default.page
Samsung - http://www.samsung.com/ru/support/download/supportDownloadMain.do
HP - http://www8.hp.com/ru/ru/support.html

After installing/reinstalling the driver, check if the adapter is turned on! To do this, return to step "Turn on wireless communication».

Getting rid of the error “Windows could not connect to...”

If your laptop sees your wireless connection, but when you try to connect it gives the error “Windows could not connect to...", then we do the following:

• click on the network icon in the tray (in this case it should have a yellow star) and find your connection;

• if the created wireless network is password-protected, then enter the password for this network and click “OK».

After this, the network icon should change to this.

If you receive such an error, then click “Troubleshoot problems" In this case, a service will be launched in which the system will try to automatically fix the connection error. Quite often this helps.

What if nothing helps?

There are, of course, more reasons why Wi-Fi does not work. What else can help:

• change the type of encryption and security (in your router settings);
• disable turning off the Wi-Fi adapter when entering sleep mode. To do this you need to go to device Manager (Start > right click on Компьютер > <font><font>Materials</font></font> > device Manager (in the left panel))

find there Network adapters, select your adapter, right-click on it and select “<font><font>Materials</font></font>»

in the window that opens, go to the “Power management" and uncheck the box "Allow this device to turn off to save power»

• delete the network connection and recreate it.