Windows Vista vista local only connection

[blondie 35]

hello and thank you in advance for any help you may be able to give me with this problem.
I have a toshiba satellite laptop that will not connect to the internet. I have tried everything i can, watched the you tube videos and changed the ip numbers and dns numbers along with numerous other "fixes". I had a good connection until I decided to do a clean recovery back to factory settings on the laptop. when the reboot was done, the internet did come on for a day and now all i get is a local only connection. I am connected through my cable providers wireless network and have no issue with connecting on my smartphone or my acer laptop. I am at my wits end here I even tried re-installing back to factory settings again but it still will not connect. in the network and sharing screen it shows my computer, then unidentified network, and no internet. it is connected, but local only. please help anyway possible. thank you.

 

[kemical]

Hi,
sounds like you might be missing a wifi driver, if you know your system model you can use google to find the driver support page and download it.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi blondie,

If you try to re-download and re-install your wifi driver as kemical suggests and it still doesn't work, it's likely your internal WLAN (wifi adapter chip) is fried and must be replaced. It's a $10 part but depending on whether or not there is a small access port on the bottom of your laptop to access it, it could be a $100 labor job to disassemble the entire laptop to get to that card and replace it.

If you don't have money for that, I might then suggest you purchase a name brand usb wifi dongle or stick that you can use to get wifi access onto that Toshiba laptop. This happens quite often in older laptops; especially if you've ever loaned them to a friend or family-member and they dropped the laptop but didn't tell you about it . The usb wifi stick costs about $30-$50 U.S. and are available everywhere online such as ebay, amazon, newegg, etc. and can even be purchased at your local radio shack or k-mart. Please buy only name brand such as cisco/Linksys and netgear and avoid cheaper knock-offs to avoid problems.

This will most likely fix your problem for the least amount of money and effort!

Best of luck to you!
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[holdum333]

Hi blondie! Your getting good advice from two techs that know their stuff. I run a Toshiba laptop also!
Here's my 2 cents on this issue and a screen shot of my device manager. I have used this program to help find drivers before. I know I'll get hollered at for suggesting a 3rd party driver up date program, but it has actually helped me before. Only down load the Wi-Fi adapter driver if Slim drivers offers it.
My advise is to only up date drivers when you are having a problem that is related to a driver problem like you're having with your Wi-Fi
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/slimdrivers.html
SlimDrivers 2.3.1.0

 

[holdum333]

Here's a screen shot of what SlimDrivers found on my Toshiba running W10.
This is one of the better driver up date freeware Apps I have found. You can see SlimDrivers found two drivers relating to my sound. I'm not having sound problems, so I ignore the up dates. Don't fix it if it ain't broke
If I was having Wi-FI adapter problems and SlimDrivers offered a up date for the adapter, then I would give it a shot.This program will always offer to create a restore point and I always let it.
What do you think @kemical and @BIGBEARJEDI Is this software any good??

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi holdum,

As a rule of thumb most of us (not all) do not like using these programs, and they tend to write stuff to the Registry that cannot easily be removed should their driver replacement fail. This often means a complete Windows Reinstallation from factory recovery disks or partition or a Windows Reset. Both of these of course are destructive operations, and extreme care must be taken to backup ALL customer personal data to external media before even thinking about trying to use one of these programs. You, kemical, and I are well aware of this and often use Image Cloning programs in case there is a catastrophic failure after the driver repair is done by the program.

There are a few good programs that do this, but even so, I don't personally trust them. I am not specifically familiar with this program so I can't give it a good rating from personal experience, so therefore I wouldn't recommend it's use for a novice user here on our forum. I NEVER recommend programs to forum users unless I personally have tested them out on my own computers or on Client computers. One other thing we've noticed on the other tech forums I volunteer on is that many of these programs (not necessarily SlimDrivers) include nasty spyware with both their free and even their paid versions of software. One good example is IOBit Advanced System Care. This fact alone would cause me to not recommend it for forum users who are looking for an easy fix to their driver-related problem.

The fact that you've had good luck with it is good for you, but not necessarily a novice user due to the fact that they often don't understand the need for a backup to external media, image cloning, etc. and because they are panicky trying to fix their problem, they resort to using an automatic program that can introduce more problems to their Windows system than they ever imagined.

IMO, the OP here is better off taking their computer to a licensed computer Tech and spending $35-$75 U.S. to get this problem professional repaired, than scrambling their Windows and having to pay twice that for a Windows reset or a Spyware Virus removal or both. Not to mention, that if they fail to execute a proper backup they could easily lose some or all of their data from that hard drive. As discussed in other threads recently, this can cost them up to $500 or more to recover from. All because the OP in question was trying to save less than a $100 trip to the computer repair shop; now they could have lost their personal data completely at a cost of $$$??

Just my thoughts of course.
Thanks for suggesting it nonetheless. If the OP does have their data properly backed up, and is aware of the risk and they CAN'T afford a repair shop visit, they just want their computer working again right away for zero cost, your method may be a way for them to go.

Cheers!
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[holdum333]

I always try to down load all freeware from FileHippo! The internet is becoming a cesspool and you have to be very careful down loading freeware these days. There are some good freeware programs out there. I only suggest slim driver if the PC user can't get a driver from the manufacture. It's hard to get up dated drivers from the manufacture if you have a old model.This is a good Company and if they have it, you can trust them not to put PUP's on you! They have hundreds of freeware Apps!
FileHippo.com - Download Free Software

 

[kemical]

What do you think @kemical and @BIGBEARJEDI Is this software any good?

I'm with BigBear on this and I dislike apps like these as they create a false sense of security. Your much better off sourcing the driver yourself even though the search might be time consuming. Once found it's just a case of creating a favourites tab and/or saving a back up of the driver (I do both).

 

[holdum333]

Hi Guys! Thanks for your replies and your options. I'm a big fan of MajorGeeks and trust them. They have been around for ever and have earned my trust!
Here's what they think. I also am not a fan of these programs, but Tim makes some good reasons for using this program. I think these Apps get a bum wrap some times, and I know MG gets money for advertising programs like these. Any way these are my thoughts. Watch the video.

 

[kemical]

Not convinced personally.. Thanks for the vid tho..

 

[holdum333]

Not convinced personally.. Thanks for the vid tho..

Wow! You are fast my friend. Your welcome. I will not recommend SlimDrivers to our members. I know how help forums feel about these programs. IMHO it's a good program, especially for users with old Rigs like myself!
Here's a good read for any one reading this thread. "If It Ain't broke, don't fix it!!
HTG Explains: When Do You Need to Update Your Drivers?

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi holdum,

Here are 3 other sites for manually downloading drivers that I find invaluable, especially on older computers:

1.) Download Drivers for FREE from the Web's largest Driver Database.
2.) Product reviews, how-tos, deals and the latest tech news
3.) Link Removed

These are in order from the oldest and most trusted to newest. Driverguide.com is the oldest repository of drivers online, and has over 1.7 million drivers--the largest on the web. I've been using them 20+ years when they became the online version of the Novell hardcover driver guide which was an industry standard for network engineers and techs in the 80s and 90s. cnet.com is an outgrowth site from their e-zine which evolved from a paper magazine back in the day; also well respected. softonic.com is newer, and has more spyware than the other 2 (though they have added lots of advertising and popups to stay in business). The good news is that most standard AV programs will easily remove the spyware you pickup from softonic's downloads, and if not Malwarebytes will usually find and remove it.

I don't recommend the softonic site to Clients, but it's great for Techs who know what they are doing. I've found drivers and apps there that I can't download anywhere else. The CNET site is actually used as a distribution mirror download site for many of the big software makers, including Symantec-Norton, Panda, Avast, Intel-McAfee, and even Microsoft uses them occasionally. Driverguide pre-dates all other manual download driver sites as they used to exist pre-web on text-based interface sites on the Internet back in the day. I usually look there first, especially if it's a network driver or wifi driver.

Again, these are only guidelines and suggestions. Most of us techs have learned by trial and error over the years not to trust the automated-driver apps, just like we don't trust automated-registry repair sites. For the average home user trying to fix his/her own computer, these sites are reasonably safe, however, they do come with advertising and spyware which is the price you pay for getting them free. The good news is that they will usually fix a broken computer, and since they are not a fee-based or subscription based service which continually monitors all the drivers in your computer and automatically tries to run various repairs (high risk!), they allow the download of 1 driver file at a time, which can be applied to a faulty or missing driver on the computer and that user may never use that download site again once their computer is fixed.

I realize you may be familiar with some of these sites, but I posted it more for other forum users who wind up reading our thread about automatic driver programs such as your SlimDriver versus the old-school manual method. Techs are more likely to use these sites as I said, and many home users are looking for a quick fix, and don't want to spend time to learn how to update or replace a faulty/missing driver--not a beginner's task.

Hope this proves helpful to everyone.
Cheers!
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[holdum333]

@BIGBEARJEDI Thanks for your reply my friend. I like SlimDrivers a lot. I use it for a reference. I only up date drivers when I'm having a problem. Just because there is a up date for a driver, doesn't mean you need it. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" I would never use a program that checks automatically for updated drivers and updates them automatically for you. The paid version of SlimDrivers will do that, and therefore, I do not recommend the paid version.
When Should You Update Your Drivers?

Rule: Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

If you’ve got a problem with a device, you should think about upgrading the drivers. If you’re looking for a speed boost, updating your drivers to the latest version isn’t a magical speed enhancement that will suddenly remove the need to upgrade a slow PC. If you’re upgrading from one version of a driver to another version, chances are good that the only things included in those updates are bug fixes for specific scenarios, and maybe some very minor performance increases. There’s more chance of breaking something than anything else, so if everything on your PC is working just fine, you can skip the driver updates for the most part.


There’s a notable exception to this rule, of course. If you’re trying to eke out every tiny bit of performance out of your system, you should make sure that your video card drivers are updated using the manufacturer’s drivers, and you probably want to upgrade your chipset, networking, and sound card drivers as well. Switching from the built-in Windows drivers for your video card to the official NVidia or ATI/AMD drivers will make a world of difference, and keeping them updated can yield huge speed gains.


Essentially, if you’ve got an AMD/ATI or NVidia video card, and you’re using the built-in Windows drivers, that’s a great time to switch drivers. Otherwise, most people can skip the process entirely.