My problem is that my laptop won't disconnect from a WiFi network when out of range unless I actually click the disconnect button. For example, if I go to my friend's house (several blocks away) and open my laptop, it still appears to be connected, just with no internet (see below).
I can't seem to find any info on why this could be happening or how to fix it. Any help with solving this would be greatly appreciated.
If you are getting any kind/amount of a signal from a previous connection but has no Internet service your device is just too far away, knows it's there but can't work with it. Only choice I've found is to use the Disconnect feature then try to Connect to a different Wi-Fi that is closer and you have the Password or it is Open to the public.
The thing is that I don't (and can't) have any signal from a previous connection. It doesn't matter how far away I am, the connection is still displayed. I once traveled to another state (2 hours away), and it still thought there was a connection. It will automatically connect to a nearby known network once I click the disconnect button, but not on it's own.
Gunnart,
I had a similar refusal to disconnect from a WiFi profile and I solved it.
- In my particular case, the unwanted network was still in range so I cannot say for certain that my symptoms were exactly the same as yours but they were certainly consistent with yours.
- The solution is not a destructive one so I do suggest you try it.
1 I turned WiFi off then repeated the fairly standard step of removing existing WiFi profiles - Settings, Networks, WiFi, Manage known networks, <select each one in turn>, Forget. Arguably, I could have just done this for the problem network but I was probably not thinking straight at the time.
2 I then opened RegEdit, went to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles
and deleted every subkey that referred to a WiFi network profile. Again, arguably, I could just have deleted all those that referred to the problem network.
3 I then turned WiFi back on and started from scratch detecting then connecting to the networks I wanted to use. There has been no repetition of the problem.
Some further commentary
A I had changed my internet connection device but had re-used the same network name on the new one.
B There were no strange entries in the list in Settings [step 1 above] & I quite wrongly thought that forgetting them represented a complete clearout.
C When I looked the Registry key [my step 2 above], I found that there were two subkeys with the relevant network name in the Description line.
- In one case, the same network name was repeated in the ProfileName line
- But the other entry contained a Profilename entry that had the expected network name with a suffix [2] after it.
- So my re-use of the name had been identified by Windows after all [I had just been trying to reduce the number of changes I had to work through when I swapped devices and had not thought there could be side-effects].
Best of luck,
Denis
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