Windows 10 Cannot see a WiFi network & cannot connect to any network

cjsmall

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I have a Lenovo N22 laptop running a fully updated Windows 10 Pro (20H2). A week ago I had a Netgear router running with a private class C LAN IP address range. The router was at address 204.107.91.254. Everything on my network worked fine, including the Lenovo.

The Netgear router turned out to be a bottleneck, so I recently removed it and started using WiFi router built into Xfinity cable modem/router. Due to range restrictions in the modem, the LAN IP address block had to be changed to 10.10.10. and the router is now 10.10.10.1. I have updated all devices, including an Amped access point, used to provide access in a distant location, that is hardwired to the cable modem/router and assigned 10.10.10.253. The access point, three hardwired Windows 10 computers, a hardwired Linux computer (all with static IP addresses), and two Android WiFi phones (DHCP assignment) all connect to the LAN without problems, both directly at the router or through the access point.

However, the Lenovo, which doesn't have an Ethernet port and can only connect through WiFi, refuses to even see the modem/router's broadcast SSID and while it can apparently "see" the 2.4 and 5.0GHz SSIDs from the access point, it cannot connect to either.

I have read over 50 articles regarding this type of problem and performed every test and reset I know of without any improvement.

I ran the network troubleshooter and it cannot fix the problem. The detailed report says zero visible access points, even though it lists the two bands from the access point and the single SSID from the modem/router (which is a shared name for 2.4 and 5.0).

I've run netsh int ip reset and netsh int ipv4 reset without luck.

I turned off all firewalls without success.

I tried ipconfig /release (and other options) but it reports: No operations can be performed on [lan/bluetooth/wifi] connection while it has its media disconnected.

I've power-cycled and rebooted everything.

I tried setting a static ipv4 address on the Lenovo rather than DHCP.

I updated the host file for both DHCP and/or static ip.

I told it to forget the modem/router SSID and ran netsh wlan delete profile="name"

I ran netsh wlan show networks and it reports the two access point SSIDs as expected, but still cannot connect to them.

So I'm coming here to see if anyone has some insight as to what might be going on, or some deeper knowledge of what to at this point. Thanks for any insights you can offer.
 
Solution
> Is the wifi driver up to date? Link Removed

Thanks to the pointer to the download. Since I didn't have internet access I couldn't do a normal upgrade. I'll download this and transfer it to the machine by thumb drive and see what happens.

....

I installed the new driver and the machine discovered and connected to the cable modem/router using DHCP! Yay.

For some reason, it still will not connect to the access point. I'll have to do some further investigation regarding that.

Thanks to everyone for all the help. I'll report back here if I discover anything else relevant to the problems.
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The Lenovo does not see the SSID for the modem/router but it does see two SSIDs for the 2.4 and 5.0 access point. However, it cannot connect to either, even though my two phones can see and connect to all three! Other than changing the IP address range and swapping out one router for the other, nothing has substantially changed in the configuration of the LAN or the Lenovo.
 
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If you do netsh wlan show filters do you have anything in the block list?

Also which what is the mode of the wireless nic on the laptop and which protocol is the third AP using? 802.11a,b,g,n,ac etc?
 
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netsh wlan show filters comes back with None in all categories.

The modem/router is broadcasting 2.4GHz 802.11 g/n/ax and 5.0GHz 802.11 a/n/ac/ax under a single SSID
The Amped access point is broadcasting 2.4GHz b/g/n and 5.0 a/n under separate SSIDs.

The Lenovo has an Intel AC 7260. Under Device Manager-->Network adapters-->AC 7200-->Advanced the following are listed:

802.11n Channel Width for 2.4GHz [Auto]
802.11n Channel Width for 5.0GHz [Auto]
Ad Hoc Channel 802.11b/g [1]
Wireless Mode [6. 802.11 a/b/g]

The access point is using the same mode it always did. As I understand it after speaking recently with Amped, it is hardwired to the LAN with a static IP address and configured to get the DHCP assignments from the modem/router. And as I said, this is working for the phones.
 
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Just a few questions/suggestions:

1) Is the DHCP configured to provide enough IP addresses for all devices on the network?

2) Do you have a USB wireless adapter to test if the laptop can connect with a different wireless card?
(this will help you find out if it is a wireless card issue)

3) Can you run a Linux live-DVD/USB on that laptop to see if it can connect that way?
(this will help you find out if it is a driver issue or operating system issue)

The most common causes are wireless standard ( 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac) incompatibility or encryption standard (WPA,WPA2 etc.) incompatibility.
 
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1) Is the DHCP configured to provide enough IP addresses for all devices on the network?
Yes, plenty. Right now there are only two phone devices connected by DHCP. Everything else is hard-wired.

2) Do you have a USB wireless adapter to test if the laptop can connect with a different wireless card?
Unfortunately, no. I had thought about that, but don't have the device.

3) Can you run a Linux live-DVD/USB on that laptop to see if it can connect that way?
Interesting idea. I don't have such a USB at the moment, but I can download an image and burn it to a thumb drive. If I get time, I'll try that over the weekend and see what happens.

The thing that puzzles me most is that it refuses to even see the SSID for the cable modem/router. I tried manually entering the SSID but that didn't "train" it to see the SSID. One thought I had was that years ago and a few cable modems back, when they first integrated the router technology, I was still using the Netgear router and may have told the Lenovo to "forget" the modem's SSID since it was not being used. (I'm just guessing here, since it was so long ago.) Is there a way to not just forget but to hide a SSID broadcast? I read many articles that seemed to possibly be discussing this, but ran across nothing that was of any help. I've poked through the registry looking for clues, but never found anything useful. There are a bunch of old network profiles in the registry, but I'm not comfortable just deleting them there without creating new residual problems.

I wish there was a way to restore networking on the OS to factory settings, but I haven't seen any mention of that. And without a DVD, an Ethernet or WiFi connection, I have no way to communicate with this machine short of a thumb drive.
 
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Network visibility comes down to a few items.
  • The wireless router on (obviously this is working)
  • Wireless NIC configuration
  • Wireless standard support 802.11X where X is the wireless protocol
  • SSID filtering
  • SSID merging, if they're beaconing with the same BSSID
  • Disabling SSID broadcasting
Usually it's #2 or #3
 
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Is the wifi driver up to date? Link Removed

But also, perhaps there is system file corruption. Elevated command prompt: sfc /scannow
 
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> Is the wifi driver up to date? Link Removed

Thanks to the pointer to the download. Since I didn't have internet access I couldn't do a normal upgrade. I'll download this and transfer it to the machine by thumb drive and see what happens.

....

I installed the new driver and the machine discovered and connected to the cable modem/router using DHCP! Yay.

For some reason, it still will not connect to the access point. I'll have to do some further investigation regarding that.

Thanks to everyone for all the help. I'll report back here if I discover anything else relevant to the problems.
 
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Solution
hello Mr. Mike, have you been able to resolve this? Without an external wifi USB, do you see the WLAN driver in your device manager network adapters? Does the wifi icon show in your taskbar of your network area?
 
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