Windows 7 "no internet access" Centrino Advanced-N 6200 AGN while walking through network

wustlumdnj

New Member
I have a two month old Lenovo ThinkPad X201T; a few weeks ago the wireless started acting strangely at times - a couple phenomena may explain the abnormality:

1. I use my laptop on two college campuses. I have wireless set up on each of them. The error occurs when I move from one side of a campus to the other side of the campus. Naturally, there are many wireless routers set up across a campus and notebooks are (I'm assuming) supposed to switch from one [access point] to the next seamlessly as to maintain the connection to the network. This worked fine on my 6 year old Dell I just replaced.
When the error started occurring on this Lenovo, as I walk from the area at which I connected to the internet on campus to maybe 30 feet away, my connection to the internet ceases (though my connection to the wireless network, access connections and windows wireless state, have not). The windows wireless states that I am connected to the wireless network but have "no internet access". I have a feeling that the wireless card may be clinging to the same unavailable access point where it first connects instead of actively seeking the closest one, but I'm a n00b so I could be wrong. This occurs on both campuses. My old laptop still works fine on each.

2. This is another phenomenon that could help explain the lack of internet connection I get when moving around on campus as stated above. When I am at my house I use my home network. When I take my laptop out of my house, get in my car, and drive two miles in any direction (without touching/turning off the laptop), the X201T says I am still connected to my house wireless connection, but according to windows wireless icon there is "no internet access". If my 6 year old Dell can handle refreshing the wireless networks while I walk around with it and disconnecting from a network when it moves out of range, why isn't my brand new lenovo laptop able to do it? I have to disable the wireless adaptor and re-enable it for the X201T to say, 'oh we're not in your house anymore, we're actually two miles away and these are the wireless networks in the area', instead of clinging to my wireless network and stating there's no internet access.

Anyone know what settings I should mess with? I would also settle for anyone helping me wipe all my network settings clean to factory settings, because this issue did not show up until a couple weeks ago and the X201T was handling internet connections fine when I first started using it. I would *really* like to fix this without restoring the whole computer to factory settings, which would involve me having to remove all my documents and have my IT department grudgingly reinstall a bunch of software.

Thank you for your assistance



Specs: Windows 7 Professional 64bit, i7 CPU, 2 GB RAM, Centrino Advanced-N 6200 AGN.
 
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