How-To Geek

I posted a couple of days ago that I ham having a tough time getting my laptop running Windows 7 to connect to the internet. No matter what I do it just will not connect. Sometimes the wireless icon looks good and I still cannot connect. Sometimes it says I have a strong signal and sometimes it shows no signal strength at all and sometimes it shows no network is found...it's all over the place. I also checked in device manager and it says it is working properly and I have done 2 system restores to an earlier date and uninstalled then reinstalled the wireless network all to no avail. I know it's not the modem or router because my other computers and devices work fine wirelessly.

Here is my new question...I tried to ping the IP address but I get a response in the command prompt that I cannot ping the IP address because "the media is disconnected". What exactly does that mean?

I had some problems in the past similar to this, made me switch almost all my devices to hardwired ethernet. Seems that many neighbors have the same ISP and the same router/gateway with identical default settings, so basically everyone was on channel "6". Getting into the router and changing my channel to 11 made it much easier to connect. Once in a while I will take a look at what other wifi nets in my area are broadcasting on and adjust accordingly. I think this is a possibility unless you have ruled it out. Your ISP will be able to tell you how to log-into your modem/router. It is worth a try before you try to buy new hardware, unless there are no other wifi nets in range....

Look in Device Manager and see if there are any Yellow symbols by the wireless device, try Rolling back the driver, then Updating the driver.