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#1
WiFi - No Internet
Hey guys... I'm at my wits end here and hoping someone can help me out.
I've been happily able to switch between my Ethernet and WiFi connections at home with no issues forever. When I'm in my home office I am connected via Ethernet because it's a considerably faster connection but, every so often, I bring my laptop to another room and connect via WiFi. Never has this been an issue.
4 days ago, I grew tired of the constant task bar pop-ups from Avira Free AV and decided to kill it and give Panda Free AV a try. Things had been going swimmingly since then so I had no reason to think there was an issue... until today that is. For the first time since I installed it, I hopped downstairs to play with my son and thus connected via WiFi. Every other device in this house (and there's a lot of them) is connected via WiFi with no issues but lucky me, upon switching to WiFi I see the dreaded yellow ! over my connection. I disconnect and reconnect a few times. I even go so far as to forget the network. Nothing. So, I run upstairs and power cycle the modem. This is where things get weird....
Power cycling the modem/router worked so I went on with life. After an hour or so I shut down my laptop and all was right with the world. Then 2-hours later, I boot it back up and wouldn't you know it the dang yellow ! is back. It is at this point that I realize it's gotta be something going on with my laptop. Yes power cycling the modem/router worked before but out of every device on my network my laptop is literally the only one having trouble so I start troubleshooting.
I have done everything under the sun at this point. I removed the annoying network adapter item Panda added with no luck so, I removed Panda. Still no luck. I've forgotten the network more times than I can count. I've flushed my DNS, I've even tried switching to Open DNS. Nothing. I checked the router (once I was connected via Ethernet obviously) and made sure nothing funky happened in the firewall settings. I even turned off the firewall completely and it didn't change anything. I installed ccleaner and had it clean up all the junk both file wise and registry wise (there were a lot of invalid firewall rules) and rebooted (omg the reboots) also with no luck. The second I disconnect from Ethernet and she tries to connect via WiFi, she finds my network, connects and then gives me the lovely yellow !. Oh, and yes, I checked with HP and I have the most recent driver for the WiFi adapter.
Now, a particular oddity worth mentioning here is while I am getting an IP once I connect, I could NOT connect to the router via WiFi. I mention that because obviously if I was truly connecting then at the very least, even without the internet, you'd think I could get to the router. Now that could just be something related to the fact that it's a router/modem combo but I'm not sure.
90% of the time my laptop is here with me in my office connected via Ethernet but that other 10% of the time is usually to play games online with my son so it's a fairly urgent need to get this corrected as I don't want to hide in my office on the weekends (haha). I've put all my specs in my profile if needed and look forward to anyone's thoughts. In the meantime, I am shutting down, walking away, and going to have a beer because dear lord this has been a waste of my day!