I bought a new netbook and when I try to connect to any available wireless networks, they won't connect. This includes free hotspots also. I am only able to connect when I am at home through my router. Any ideas on how I can fix this. Thanks

I assume you mean the free ones showed up on the screen with a strong signal and had no passwords? Have you used the same locations before with a laptop?

If you can get on in your home site it should work outside. I'd ask the staff in the hot spots if there is a secret handshake or something.




I was in a Panera Bread and had trouble hooking up but I somehow (just fiddling around) reached a little local website where they had me promise to be good before I went out on the internet. It was not intuitivly obvious to me (as a non-power-user) how to get access otherwise.

Yes, those are the ones, they say they are available, but they won't connect, they only connect on my friend's laptop. Do you think this has anything to do with my netbook? I ask because this originally had another operating system installed, I installed Windows XP with the correct drivers

It's possible you have a static IP set on your computer for your home network. You'll need to remove that.

Control Panel >> Network Connections >> Local Area Connection >> Properties >> TCP/IP >> Properties

You want a checkmark in "Obtain an IP adress automatically"

Thanks, I'll try that.

I tried that and it still doesn't work. It only give me a list of networks that need passwords, the ones that don't need passwords, don't show up on the list.

What wireless card are you using or is it built in? The reason I ask this is that external wireless cards tend to have software that override some windows settings.

The wireless card is built-in, it says it's a Realtek. This is a Sylvania gbook I bought. This originally had a diff operating system, it had gos, I installled Windows xp and dowloaded all the drivers from the website.

OK well I'm a bit busy atm so I will post a list of settings to check later.

I downloaded all drivers available for this and still can't connect. I only connect through my router. Any free available networks don't show up on my list, but when I switch to use a friend's laptop, they have it on their list. What could be preventing me from viewing these also?

I have had this problem before. I went to add/remove programs and re-installed all communications features then;

Go to a command prompt

Type sfc /scannow

(be sure to have a windows disk in the disk drive)

Let it finish and then reboot.

That fixed the problem for me.

You already check all the settings & also able to connect to your own router which means there is nothing wrong with you system , might be the available WiFi's have MAC filters enable over them that's why you are unable to connect to them but in case of free hotspot MAC filters are always disabled just try to enable MAC filter over your router & enable MAC filter w-r-t your MAC address (MAC address of your WLAN card) and check either it's the same like the problem you were faced or not one more thing start serrvice in your computer with the name of "Wireless Zero Configuration" (in windows XP) in Vista service name will be "Wireless Auto Configuration"