Laptop not connecting to internet...

staffordjas

staffordjas

Well-Known Forumite
BobClay said:
The aerial often loops around inside the lid of the laptop, and connects to the WiFi adaptor via small brass plugs.
Click to expand...

Well ..... just moved the lid position before putting power back on , and it wouldn't power up at all.
Closed it again , reopened and its connected to the internet straight away .


So problem could be the aerial connections in the lid ???

( first time we've closed it completely since septembers holiday, was when moving table to put Xmas decs up last week . Thats around the time it started dropping out)
 
BobClay

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Does sound like an aerial problem, which is a classic intermittent fault.

The old joke with regard to radio is: 'Why is it called wireless ?? There's f****** wires all over the place !' (aerials,)

This applies more to lower frequencies admittedly, (e.g. HF or short wave) but it is a reasonable whinge. :teef:
 
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staffordjas

staffordjas

Well-Known Forumite
Looks like you may have solved the cause with the aerial connections in the lid @BobClay . :up: It's stayed on all day until the lid must have been moved slightly tonight (we must have a ghost as hubby is denying moving it .... :roll: ) and lost connection until I pushed it a bit further back and it's re-connected again.
 
BobClay

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
At a guess there's a possibility of a fracture in the aerial wire where is passes through the hinge of the lid, there will be movement here as the lid is opened/closed.

For pure interest when I worked at the Community College I once had a brand new Dell Laptop returned to us for repair by a teacher at the start of the September term. The laptop had been issued just before the Summer holidays. So six weeks later we opened it up, to find a horrible smell and a very badly corroded motherboard. Apparently the teacher's cat had peed on the keyboard at the beginning of the holiday. Had he contacted us straight away we might have been able to strip it down and clean it up, but he left it over the holidays ... six weeks !!! I don't know what cat pee contains, but my guess it would corrode neutronium !!!
Since it was still under guarantee he insisted it be returned for repair/replacement. We did so, and got a very polite letter from Dell saying the guarantee did not cover (and I quote) 'user abuse.'
I don't think they were having a go at the cat here (why a cat would want to pee on a laptop is beyond me ... who knows what goes on in a cat's head.) All we could do is retrieve a few useful spares from it, and then dump it.

The Teacher ? ... a PE teacher. (SAY NO MORE.)
 
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Glam

Glam

Mad Cat Woman
BobClay said:
At a guess there's a possibility of a fracture in the aerial wire where is passes through the hinge of the lid, there will be movement here as the lid is opened/closed.

For pure interest when I worked at the Community College I once had a brand new Dell Laptop returned to us for repair by a teacher at the start of the September term. The laptop had been issued just before the Summer holidays. So six weeks later we opened it up, to find a horrible smell and a very badly corroded motherboard. Apparently the teacher's cat had peed on the keyboard at the beginning of the holiday. Had he contacted us straight away we might have been able to strip it down and clean it up, but he left it over the holidays ... six weeks !!! I don't know what cat pee contains, but my guess it would corrode neutronium !!!
Since it was still under guarantee he insisted it be returned for repair/replacement. We did so, and got a very polite letter from Dell saying the guarantee did not cover (and I quote) 'user abuse.'
I don't think they were having a go at the cat here (why a cat would want to pee on a laptop is beyond me ... who knows what goes on in a cat's head.) All we could do is retrieve a few useful spares from it, and then dump it.

The Teacher ? ... a PE teacher. (SAY NO MORE.)
Click to expand...
1 of our cats was sick on the Virgin box. I cleaned it to within an inch of its life, (the box - not the cat!)
Luckily when the engineer came, he reckoned we should have got a new one yonks ago, and changed it. I even think there might have been a bit of cat wee in there too.
 
G

gilesjuk

Well-Known Forumite
It does sound like classic metal fatigue in the wires. You solution is pretty simple, deactivate the internal WIFI, buy a USB wifi adaptor and use that. Cheaper than getting it repaired.
 
staffordjas

staffordjas

Well-Known Forumite
gilesjuk said:
It does sound like classic metal fatigue in the wires. You solution is pretty simple, deactivate the internal WIFI, buy a USB wifi adaptor and use that. Cheaper than getting it repaired.
Click to expand...
Sons popping round tonight, so I'll mentioned this to him.

It's been staying connected a lot more since keeping the lid in that certain position. Does keep dropping out still though a few times a day , and darent do any purchases or banking on it incase it crashes mid- transactions.

( maybe same problem when it playied up the other month whilst booking Stafford hotel stay. Connection went briefly whiilst right at end of booking process. But had taken payment from card. Stafford Travelodge could see a booking 'in limbo ' on their system but room not actually booked in on their system and couldn’t do anything except give me head office number and the error message on their screen to quote. Head office had to refund & rebook over the phone... Will ring to book in first place next time! 😂)
 
G

gilesjuk

Well-Known Forumite
staffordjas said:
Sons popping round tonight, so I'll mentioned this to him.

It's been staying connected a lot more since keeping the lid in that certain position. Does keep dropping out still though a few times a day , and darent do any purchases or banking on it incase it crashes mid- transactions.

( maybe same problem when it playied up the other month whilst booking Stafford hotel stay. Connection went briefly whiilst right at end of booking process. But had taken payment from card. Stafford Travelodge could see a booking 'in limbo ' on their system but room not actually booked in on their system and couldn’t do anything except give me head office number and the error message on their screen to quote. Head office had to refund & rebook over the phone... Will ring to book in first place next time! 😂)
Click to expand...

You can just use something like this, £9.99 will be a lot cheaper than replacing cables, lid of the unit or the entire thing.

 
FreeITstafford

FreeITstafford

Well-Known Forumite
If it helps in future...
We see a lot of laptops with wifi issues, sometimes it can be the antenna cable in the screen hinge which flexes over time and degrades, as mentioned, sometimes it's a driver issue, sometimes it's the wifi card itself, there's also been one with liquid damage to the hardware switch which took ages to diagnose (a physical on/off switch around the rim of the laptop) but also beware there are often combinations of key presses that can switch it on/off inadvertently if you also use those keys for other functions in your applications.

To save mucking about, and to account for unreliability in the future, in a lot of cases we spend a couple of quid on ebay to get a USB wifi dongle and just sack the built-in wifi.

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