Choose a wireless network

I used to have this problem a lot in XP. It went away and I didn't know
why, and I've connected easily with my own LAN and with my landlady's
when I was on my trip this spring, and on 3 occasions with 2 hotels and
a McDonalds when I was in the car during the trip. And I've connected
several times since I got back home. Unfortunately it started again
tonight when I need the web.


The icon in the systray shows that I'm not connected to the network so I
click on it and the Choose a Wireless Network window shows up.

Start he At the top is my LAN with 5 bars, much more than any of my
neighbors.

In the upper right corner of my LAN's box, it says Not Connected and
there's a gold star.

But in the text in the box it says, "You are currently connected to this
network. To disconnect from this network click Disconnect"

Now I don't want to disconnect, but maybe it will make it possible to
connect.

So I click Disconnect at the bottom of the window and get a box that
says "Are you sure you want to disconnect from this network, Wireless
Heaven [my network]? Once you have disconnected Windows will not
reconnect to this network automatically. To reconnect to this network in
the future, select it from the list and click Connect. Yes / No"

So I click Yes and the list of the networks around me goes blank for a
bit then reappears with mine at the top. I select it and I'm back at
Start Here, above. Instead of the click box saying Connect, it says
Disconnect. And the text in my LAN's box says I'm connected but the
upper right corner says I'm not.

TIA

In message , micky
writes:
I used to have this problem a lot in XP. It went away and I didn't know
why, and I've connected easily with my own LAN and with my landlady's
when I was on my trip this spring, and on 3 occasions with 2 hotels and
a McDonalds when I was in the car during the trip. And I've connected
several times since I got back home. Unfortunately it started again
tonight when I need the web.


The icon in the systray shows that I'm not connected to the network so I
click on it and the Choose a Wireless Network window shows up.

Start he At the top is my LAN with 5 bars, much more than any of my
neighbors.

In the upper right corner of my LAN's box, it says Not Connected and
there's a gold star.

But in the text in the box it says, "You are currently connected to this
network. To disconnect from this network click Disconnect"

Now I don't want to disconnect, but maybe it will make it possible to
connect.

So I click Disconnect at the bottom of the window and get a box that
says "Are you sure you want to disconnect from this network, Wireless
Heaven [my network]? Once you have disconnected Windows will not
reconnect to this network automatically. To reconnect to this network in
the future, select it from the list and click Connect. Yes / No"

I'm afraid I don't know what's causing your machine to behave as it is
doing, but I do know that if you say yes to that question, it is telling
the truth: from then on, it won't _automatically_ connect to it: you'll
have to tell it to (and I _think_ re-enter the key).

If you _do_ say yes there, you _can_ turn it back to automatically
connecting; it's a bit convoluted, but let me see ... ah yes, you have
to get to "Wireless Network Connection Properties". Here's one way:
right-click on the tray icon ["))" with a red cross on it] and select
View Available Wireless Networks, then on Change the order of connected
networks; you should be in the Wireless Networks tab, and have a list of
Preferred networks. Find yours in the list (and maybe Move up it to the
top); then, if it doesn't say (Automatic) after it, click its
Properties, then the Connection tab, then tick Connect when this network
is in range.

This will return your system to automatically connecting to that
network, if you've turned that off by saying Yes to the above question.
I don't know if it will fix the problem you've described, though.

So I click Yes and the list of the networks around me goes blank for a
bit then reappears with mine at the top. I select it and I'm back at
Start Here, above. Instead of the click box saying Connect, it says
Disconnect. And the text in my LAN's box says I'm connected but the
upper right corner says I'm not.

TIA

Hmm. Very odd! I'd have expected it to say Connect, since you said Yes
to disconnect.

(I have something worse: from time to time mine disconnects from my
wifi, and the only way to reconnect that I've found is a restart. Until
sometime in the last month, the tray icon switched to the one with the
little ball moving back and forth; now, it usually still shows as
connected, but it isn't. I'd assumed the wifi card was dying - though it
could remain connected for hours or days - but I got an external one,
and the same happened with that. [Yes, I did have the internal one
turned off.] And - with either the internal or external wifi hardware -
if I tell it to "repair" the connection, it gets as far as "turning off
your wireless adapter" or whatever, but then when it does the nest step,
turning it back on, the computer reboots.)

Actually, that might be worth trying on _your_ system - perhaps after
making sure your network _is_ shown as automatic in the list under
Change the Order; right-click on the tray icon, select Repair, and see
what happens!
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

There I was, sitting in a glum mood - 'Cheer up, things could be worse',
he said, so I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.

So how come it says I'm not connected when I wasn't and when I was, but
yesterday at Autozone, it said I wasn't connected and I wasn't?

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 01:46:17
-0400, micky wrote:

I used to have this problem a lot in XP. It went away and I didn't know
why, and I've connected easily with my own LAN and with my landlady's
when I was on my trip this spring, and on 3 occasions with 2 hotels and
a McDonalds when I was in the car during the trip. And I've connected
several times since I got back home. Unfortunately it started again
tonight when I need the web.


The icon in the systray shows that I'm not connected to the network so I
click on it and the Choose a Wireless Network window shows up.

Start he At the top is my LAN with 5 bars, much more than any of my
neighbors.

In the upper right corner of my LAN's box, it says Not Connected and
there's a gold star.

But in the text in the box it says, "You are currently connected to this
network. To disconnect from this network click Disconnect"

Now I don't want to disconnect, but maybe it will make it possible to
connect.

So I click Disconnect at the bottom of the window and get a box that
says "Are you sure you want to disconnect from this network, Wireless
Heaven [my network]? Once you have disconnected Windows will not
reconnect to this network automatically. To reconnect to this network in
the future, select it from the list and click Connect. Yes / No"

So I click Yes and the list of the networks around me goes blank for a
bit then reappears with mine at the top. I select it and I'm back at
Start Here, above. Instead of the click box saying Connect, it says
Disconnect. And the text in my LAN's box says I'm connected but the
upper right corner says I'm not.

TIA

I restarted the computer and maybe that's why it's connected now, and it
says it's connected. (Hey, last time, I clicked the wrong place and it
was downloading a bunch of mail I didnt' want on my laptop so on this
Acer netbook, I turned off the wifi receiver, and its light went out.
But now, it's light is back on and I never turned it back on, but I
didn't notice until now that the switch springs back to On. !)

Actually it first connected to a very weak signal of Xfinitywifi --
which IIUC used to be free for a certain amount of data each month, but
now is only free for a certain amount of data ONCE -- and I'm guessing
it didn't connect to me because it got a bad message from before, but I
disconnected from Xfinity, and connected to my own LAN.

I wonder if restart fixed the problem below, and if it's the only way to
fix it I can't always restart conveniently.

I thought you'd all want to know.


In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Sun, 15 Oct 2017 12:00:22
-0400, micky wrote:


So how come it says I'm not connected when I wasn't and sometimes when I was, but
yesterday at Autozone, it said I wasn't connected and I wasn't?

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 01:46:17
-0400, micky wrote:

I used to have this problem a lot in XP. It went away and I didn't know
why, and I've connected easily with my own LAN and with my landlady's
when I was on my trip this spring, and on 3 occasions with 2 hotels and
a McDonalds when I was in the car during the trip. And I've connected
several times since I got back home. Unfortunately it started again
tonight when I need the web.


The icon in the systray shows that I'm not connected to the network so I
click on it and the Choose a Wireless Network window shows up.

Start he At the top is my LAN with 5 bars, much more than any of my
neighbors.

In the upper right corner of my LAN's box, it says Not Connected and
there's a gold star.

But in the text in the box it says, "You are currently connected to this
network. To disconnect from this network click Disconnect"

Now I don't want to disconnect, but maybe it will make it possible to
connect.

So I click Disconnect at the bottom of the window and get a box that
says "Are you sure you want to disconnect from this network, Wireless
Heaven [my network]? Once you have disconnected Windows will not
reconnect to this network automatically. To reconnect to this network in
the future, select it from the list and click Connect. Yes / No"

So I click Yes and the list of the networks around me goes blank for a
bit then reappears with mine at the top. I select it and I'm back at
Start Here, above. Instead of the click box saying Connect, it says
Disconnect. And the text in my LAN's box says I'm connected but the
upper right corner says I'm not.

TIA

micky wrote:


I wonder if restart fixed the problem below, and if it's the only way to
fix it I can't always restart conveniently.

I thought you'd all want to know.

Restarting equipment allows state information to be
gathered and re-computed.

On OSes like Windows 10, you want to make sure your
system is not "Fast Starting", so it's not loading
a hibernated kernel image. You want it to boot
from scratch, and load each driver separately.
In Power Options, there should be an option to
disable Fast Start. An OS like WinXP, if you boot
from scratch, doesn't have that nuance to worry about.

Modern Windows relies on your RAM being error free.
This is why you should memtest once a year, to
make sure this assumption actually holds true. I
get "failures in service here", typically at the
1.5 to 2 year mark of RAM ownership. The RAM on this
computer was just replaced a couple months ago, because
it failed, and it failed in a sensitive location that
Windows uses. With all sorts of hilarious symptoms
to confuse Paul...

http://www.memtest.org/

Now, if Intel would only enable ECC on all their products.
It's not normal operation I'm worried about. I'd like
a feature where "broken RAM talks to you", and having
working ECC would be an excellent way to report that.
The RAM I just replaced, was ECC RAM, but the (broken)
Intel chipset (X48) promised DDR2 ECC, but it doesn't work.
So I got no warning early on, that something was wrong.

Paul

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Mon, 16 Oct 2017 16:18:34
-0400, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:


I wonder if restart fixed the problem below, and if it's the only way to
fix it I can't always restart conveniently.

I thought you'd all want to know.

Restarting equipment allows state information to be
gathered and re-computed.

I didn't want to restart because I had lots of info showing. I only
restarted because of the problem in the new thread. Resinstalling that
software would not have been complete without restarting.

I ended up taking screen shots of two CMD windows, so I'll know what to
write the next time. I hope I remember the rest of what I was doing.
(I dont' remember if I posted here about the date inaccuracies on the
photos I took. I thought I was done repairing them when, amazingly,
only half of tthem were repaired. But maybe even they aren't. I got
tired at this point and decided that for now, they didn't need the right
dates because I'm not posting them yet, only showing them to my brother,
and I'll know which is before which (and he won't care.)

On OSes like Windows 10, you want to make sure your
system is not "Fast Starting", so it's not loading

I have it set for fast start and I can tell sometimes it is faster and I
like that. Isnt' there some way I can do that normally but require it
to do a slow start


a hibernated kernel image. You want it to boot
from scratch, and load each driver separately.
In Power Options, there should be an option to
disable Fast Start. An OS like WinXP, if you boot
from scratch, doesn't have that nuance to worry about.

Modern Windows relies on your RAM being error free.
This is why you should memtest once a year, to

I'm sure you don't remember that when I bought this used PC, one stick
was bad and I got memory crashes every two weeks or so and less often
other crashes. Since I bought new bigger memory, I haven't had that,
but of course I get your point that the mem could have a problem. After
all, the bad memory I just replaced probably wasn't bad when it was new.

make sure this assumption actually holds true. I
get "failures in service here", typically at the
1.5 to 2 year mark of RAM ownership. The RAM on this

Wow.

computer was just replaced a couple months ago, because
it failed, and it failed in a sensitive location that
Windows uses. With all sorts of hilarious symptoms
to confuse Paul...

That's only fair, since often your posts confuse me.

Did I mention that my android phone that I bought a year ago June by
September was saying there was a problem with the SD card and I should
it, but I would have to copy it to the PC, format it, and copy it back
and it seemed like it would take too much time, so I postponed it for 14
or 15 months and now the phone is broken, so I never have to do it!!!

http://www.memtest.org/

Now, if Intel would only enable ECC on all their products.
It's not normal operation I'm worried about. I'd like
a feature where "broken RAM talks to you", and having
working ECC would be an excellent way to report that.
The RAM I just replaced, was ECC RAM, but the (broken)
Intel chipset (X48) promised DDR2 ECC, but it doesn't work.
So I got no warning early on, that something was wrong.

I'm sorry to hear that. I hope to understand it some day, but not this
week. Too much going on. ;-)

Paul