Laptop cannot connect to router (wifi and ethernet)

[louieansonng]

Hi,
I have a friend who's having issues with his laptop. His Acer laptop is able to connect wired and wirelessly at our school's internet which uses a proxy, however he's having problems connecting his laptop at home since last week. It was able to connect without problems before that....I went to his house a while ago and was able to connect mine. I tried using the troubleshooter and it said a problem about the network access and router and that I should reset it. However, no matter how many times we tried it still didn't work. I turned the WPA key off and tried connecting the ethernet cable directly to the laptop but to no avail. I also tried reinstalling the drivers for the wi-fi and it still doesn't work. It shows up an error saying "Windows cannot connect to xxxxx". He's using Windows 7 Ultimate by the way. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Guest]

Check TCP/IP Properties.

Start, Connect To, Connection, Properties, Scroll Down TCP/IP and highlight, click Properties and check that Obtain DNS and IP address automatically are enabled.

May different on Windows 7 -- but I'm sure you can improvise.

 

[louieansonng]

I have checked those parts and they are already set to that option. Still not working.

 

[louieansonng]

bump

 

[Guest]

I suspect the key to the problem is the fact that the computer happily connects at a site using a proxy. I would have thought that resetting TCP/IP properties to defaults would have solved that, but clearly not. You may have to look for another setting to do with that, but I confess I haven't found it.

 

[louieansonng]

I think I know where the problem is. We installed a 32-bit Windows 7 OS in his laptop, but we used 64-bit drivers for the hardware because Acer didn't provide 32-bit versions for these, although I'm not quite sure how to explain the fact that it worked inside the school campus with a proxy on, and not at home without the proxy.

 

[Guest]

I'm not sure why it worked at all with the wrong drivers !

 

[louieansonng]

Lol. I only read on the internet that 64-bit Operating systems can't work with 32-bit drivers, but I can't find results regarding 32-bit Operating systems installed with 64-bit drivers. All the other hardware like the touchpad, bluetooth, and chipset work properly, only the LAN and WLAN seem to be experiencing problems.

 

[Guest]

Possible the touchpad, bluetooth found drivers within Windows7. I was surprised how well 7 coped with video card which always needed a maker's driver in XP -- but 7 couldn't make the Realtek sound chip work, nor a Soundblaster when that was installed.

Win 7 should have had no prob with a wired LAN card -- but wireless cards are a problem -- few drivers are being written for older models.

 

[louieansonng]

I don't think the laptop was an old one. It's running on an AMD triple-core processor.