Wifi connection not working on smartphone or laptop

Wifi connection not working on smartphone or laptop
During the last years, the number of wifi connections grew exponentially as people tend to use more mobile devices than cable connections. Almost everyone uses a mobile phone, tablet or laptop connected to a wireless connection as it is easier to use than having a fixed location.

However, sometimes we have problems when trying to connect to wireless connections and to fix these problems, we need to follow a few steps. We will describe the most common problems when using a mobile device or laptop to connect to a wireless network.

Wifi connection not working on smartphone or laptop
Here’s what we can do if the laptop is not connecting to a wifi network.

  1. First of all, check the connection and router. The easiest way to do this is to try to connect to the wireless network with another device (smartphone, laptop, tablet) and if it works, most probably the issue is on the laptop end.
  2. Check if the wireless networks are found and, when connecting to a network, make sure the password (passphrase) is correct. If you can’t see any wifi network on your laptop, first check if your wireless card is enabled (access Start – ncpa.cpl – here you should see something like Wi-Fi – right click on it – if the first option is Enable, then enable it – you can also do that if you have a wifi button on the laptop). Then, make sure you are using the latest network card driver from your manufacturer website. If reinstalling the network driver does not fix your issue, you should check your laptop in a service shop as the network card may be faulty and it can require replacement.
  3. If you can find the network, it prompts for password but it doesn’t connect, then it may be something router related. To do this, we should connect with a different device (e.g via cable), to the router web interface and check the Firewall section (or something related to MAC or IP filtering) to make sure we don’t have any blacklist rule which could prevent us from connecting. Also, make sure the maximum number of devices which can connect is not reached. In order to connect to router admin interface, we need to access in browser router LAN IP (it’s usually written on the browser, usually it’s 192.168.1.1, 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.100 by default), login using the username and password (also seen on the router, if those weren’t changed).
  4. In case you still can’t connect with any device, you can try to factory reset the router.

Wifi connection not working on smartphone or laptop
Here’s what we can do if the smartphone is not connecting to a wifi network.

On smartphones, checks we can do are simpler as here we can’t check or reinstall network drivers. Here’s what we can try when the mobile phone is not connecting to a wireless network:

  1. First of all, we strongly suggest to reboot both the smartphone and the router, as many issues can be solved by this easy operation. Then, we can test if the phone can connect to another wireless network, if it can then issue is related to the router.
  2. Use the Forget button on the phone for this network in case your credentials are saved, this way it will prompt again for credentials and you can make sure those are correctly inputted.
  3. Try to connect to the wireless network with another device and if it works, check the router firewall (see point 3 above).
  4. Try to connect a PC via cable and make sure this works, to avoid an internet problem.
  5. If you still have issues, you can try to factory reset the router.

Most of the times, wifi issues can be fixed by rebooting the devices we use. If you still have issues after following the suggestions above, please leave a comment below and we will try to help you.

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