Can't access some websites on wifi; new Asus Aspire + win10 upgrade

swatkinsjr said:

Thanks for the idea, Sciencegeek. I'd grown suspicious of McAfee. I'll try that this evening when I'm back in front of my home machine.

Brummyfan... sounds like that's worth a try, but I'm afraid that's an area that's pretty unfamiliar to me. How does one go about switching DNS?

Right click Wi-Fi icon in your task bar, select Open Network and sharing centre, click your Wi-Fi connection, at the next window, click Properties, highlight Internet Protocol Version 4 and click Properties, select "Use the following DNS server address" radio button and change the DNS.
Open dns: 208 67 222 222
208 67 220 220
Google dns: 8 8 8 8
8 8 4 4

sciencegeek said:

Does your McAfee include netguard? McAfee Help It's supposed to guard against risky sites but what could be risky about outlook.com and evernote.com. Let's disable it and try the sites.

When I look inside McAfee and check for Netguard on either Firefox or Edge, I find it's already set to "Off" and grayed-out with no ability to switch to on. I think that means I don't have Netguard.

brummyfan said:

You could also try switching your DNS to Open dns or google dns.

No dice. Switching up the DNS failed to produce results.

My wife had a contact with someone who does tech support that suggested I might need to do some sort of update to my router to get it playing nicely with Windows 10... Going to try that next.

Updating on this problem:

I tried to figure how to update the firmware on my cable modem/wifi router and if an update was needed, but couldn't find any option within the modem's settings to find an update.

For reference, I have a Motorola SBG6580. The firmware is SBG6580-6.5.2.0-GA-06-077-NOSH. It appears to be Motorola firmware rather than Arris firmware (not sure if that makes a difference). We've got Comcast, but we own the modem outright.

Long story short, I just can't figure out how to tell if there's something in the modem/router that's causing my problem. As before, if I connect directly via cord to the modem, I can access the websites affected just fine. But if I switch to the wifi, I get timeout errors.

What am I missing? What else can I try to fix this problem?

(Also FYI I found my free McAfee trial period was half up, so I just uninstalled the whole thing. Hopefully that eliminates that as a potential source of the problem. But I continue to experience the problem after uninstalling.)

You could try removing (deleting) Wi-Fi connections in Networking and Sharing centre, connect your laptop with Ethernet cable, after establishing internet connection, create new Wi-Fi connection and see whether you notice any difference.

brummyfan said:

You could try removing (deleting) Wi-Fi connections in Networking and Sharing centre, connect your laptop with Ethernet cable, after establishing internet connection, create new Wi-Fi connection and see whether you notice any difference.

Interesting. I tried that... and now I can access Outlook.com, as a for example, but still not Evernote.com. I'm really more worried about the latter than the former. But I don't see anything in the settings that looks different.

One thing I did see, however, was that when I'm on wifi, when I check the connection for my device on the modem/router's firmware, it lists my computer with a connection but at a tenth the speed I should be able to achieve. (It shows me connected at 6500 Kbps on a 802.11n, versus my wife's older laptop connected at 24000 kbps on 802.11g, my android phone on 802.11n at 58500 and our networked printer also on an n connection at 65000.)

I've also learned that if I want to continue with the path of updating my modem/router's firmware, I have to contact Comcast (our ISP) and wade through the agonizingly unhelpful customer service morass until I reach someone I can convince to upgrade that firmware for me... but other research suggests there's a chance this could have other unintended consequences... Not sure if it's worth the pain of calling Comcast, yet, if there might still be other things I can do...

I'm also finding, as I use this computer more, that I'll run into websites where, say, the home page loads just fine, but subpages withing the same domain may not load at all... (example: I can visit Connectedtext.com, but not Connectedtext.com/download.php).

I'm still open to trying anything else that might possibly help. Is it possible I'm getting these timeout problems because of the slowness of my connection? Any ideas about why my computer might be connecting at such a slow speed, despite using the wifi n protocol?

Hi swatkinsjr,
Try looking for Atheros QCA9377 drivers, even if they are for 7/8/8.1 might work. Have a look in your PM.

brummyfan said:

Hi swatkinsjr,
Try looking for Atheros QCA9377 drivers, even if they are for 7/8/8.1 might work. Have a look in your PM.

I think that did it!

I'd tried updating the drivers before from the Devices panel, but it kept telling me I already had the latest driver. But after trying again to update the Atheros driver, I finally got a real update, and it seems to work. It's still a tiny bit slow, but not to the point of bothering me, and so far I've been able to access any website I go to without trouble.

Thanks!

Good, glad to be of help:)