One device can't connect to 2.4GHz Wi-FI

RickC said:

Try creating a new account and connecting again. If successful then this suggests a user profile issue. If not successful then this suggests a machine-wide issue.

Thanks, I didn't even think about that. Was going to try that today but thought I'd just check my current account first and, what do you know, connected to all 2.4GHz networks with no problem. Goodness knows what the heck is going on for it to be so random.

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And today it's back to not being able to connect to 2.4GHz networks. So I did what you suggested and created a second account but it can't connect either. Obviously the problem is system-wide. This is so frustrating. Short of doing a PC reset, do you have any other suggestions?

kiwichick said:

All other devices (laptop, phone, tablet, TV, PlayStation, Android TV dongle) can connect to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, it's only my laptop that can't.

What, if anything, happens if you disconnect some of these other devices from the 2.4GHz band?

Six devices shouldn't really be an issue... but what happens if your laptop is the only device trying to connect on the 2.4GHz band? Does it suddenly work?

RickC said:

What, if anything, happens if you disconnect some of these other devices from the 2.4GHz band?

Six devices shouldn't really be an issue... but what happens if your laptop is the only device trying to connect on the 2.4GHz band? Does it suddenly work?

I think I can answer without even doing that because, for the Starlink network, I'm the only one who uses it so no other devices are connected, or trying to connect, to it anyway.

kiwichick said:

I think I can answer without even doing that because, for the Starlink network, I'm the only one who uses it so no other devices are connected, or trying to connect, to it anyway.

In that case the only thing I can suggest is to use a wifi analyzer like WiFi Analyzer (from the Microsoft Store) or inSSIDer to measure the signal strength of the 2.4GHz band to see whether the current channels in use are being swamped by your neighbours, even though it only affects one device.

Sorry but I cannot think of anything else to try.

RickC said:

In that case the only thing I can suggest is to use a wifi analyzer like WiFi Analyzer (from the Microsoft Store) or inSSIDer to measure the signal strength of the 2.4GHz band to see whether the current channels in use are being swamped by your neighbours, even though it only affects one device.

Sorry but I cannot think of anything else to try.

I seriously doubt it's anything to do with channels being swamped. My two nearest neighbours are about 500m and 1km away. I live rural with only six houses in total on a 4km stretch of road. Then the next nearest road and houses are at least 7kms away. I think I'll just put up with it until I plan on doing a PC reset and see if that fixes it.

At the end of the day, I still have the 5GHz connections. It's really only an issue when I want to connect to the second access point connected to my main router because it only has 2.4GHz. It runs my media server so I often need to connect to it so I can send files to it via network shared folders. But I can use an Ethernet cable so I'll just do that. Thank you so much for all your fantastic help 😀👍