College wireless trouble

Yes, I know I really should be getting help from my school about this. But, I've tried and the tech support people here seem reluctant to help me. I'd like to be able to fix this problem myself if it's at all possible.

I have a Dell M1210. Up until about two weeks ago I could connect to the wireless network at my college and the internet fine, from different access points all over campus. The college's network is open, but after you connect to it you have to open a web browser and login to your school e-mail account before you can actually connect to anything else online. I'm guessing it's a fairly typical setup.

Nothing in my setup has changed. Two weeks ago, when I would open up Firefox to login to the college's network (the browser is automatically redirected to the login page when it tries to go anywhere else) the login page wouldn't come up. Connection to the network is excellent, but as I haven't logged in I can't actually connect to any websites, except for the school's website. For a day or two I assumed it was a problem on the College's end, but then I noticed other students connecting to the internet with their laptops fine.

I tried speaking to a tech in one of the computer labs who asked me if anything on my setup has changed (nothing has) and for me to take down my firewall. I use Zone Alarm. I took it down but still couldn't connect. The tech said it was probably an error on the school's end as they are updating some of their systems, but a nearby student who happened to be taking out his laptop helped to illustrate the point that everyone but me seems to be connecting fine. The other student let me look at the URL of the login page and I manually typed it into my browser - it didn't load.

This is happening to me with both IE and Firefox (latest versions). Disabling my firewall doesn't work. I've also tried clearing all cookies and cache on the laptop. I can connect to my home network with no problems. Every other student on campus seems to be able to connect wirelessly with no problems...

Any help would really be appreciated. The tech support office I was forwarded to by the staff here seems to be perpetually empty every time I try to stop in...

 

Are you actually connected to the network? IE, are you being assigned an IP address?

 

Have you tried resetting IE to default in Advanced tab in Internet Options?
Have you tried lowering the security level in Security tab?

 

My wireless adapter shows my signal strength to the network as excellent. I just did ipconfig on it (I'm using a school PC with my laptop next to me) and it does display an IP address. But the problem persists: the login window will not pop up and the only website I can access is the school's.

Firefox is my main browser, but I tried bringing up IE to trouble shoot this. Just took a shot at your suggestions, they didn't fix it...

Once again any and all help appreciated.

 

You might want to take it to your college's network operations helpdesk.

 

Do a tracert command in "RUN" to the internet website you would like to connect to it should start off with your school's gateway ip and run threw the hops, this should tell you where the communication is stopping,then try a nslookup command to see if you can get the ip/url of where it's stopping(last ip/url), this will tell you if it's the college network or not. This isn't a fix but it can help you to isolate the problem. But like people have suggested I would go to the shcool's techs to find out what exactly is going on.

 

Have you been able to login using another computer???? If not it is something on your Account, that is not correct. The only persons able to correct it would be there IT staff.

It sounds like they are running there service through a proxy. Check to see if you are setup to use a proxy.

 

It could very well be YOUR actual wireless card. I've had problems very similar to the ones you described, and it ended up just being a faulty wireless card.

What took me so long to figure it out was the fact that the card still PICKS the signal up, and identifies it as "Excellent/Good". But the card I had could not SEND.

I would start by isolating potential hardware problems:
1.) Check to see if you can connect to the internet through an ethernet cable, preferably on your college's network. If not, any network will do.
2.) Check to see if your wireless card can connect to any other wireless network besides your college's network. Somewhere like Starbucks or your local bookstore might have a free wireless access point.

If you can do both of the above, we can pretty much rule out any hardware issues. Any additional information will help as well.

Oh, and what wireless card do you have and have you tried updating its drivers?

 

I think hardware problems on my end can be ruled out... I have a wireless network at home which I can connect to with no problems. There are also neighbors with nearby unsecured wireless networks I can also connect to. In addition, I take my laptop to work on the weekends and connect it to the internet via it's Ethernet port with no problems. The wireless card will send/receive information on the college's network. I know because it works on the school's website. But instead of being directed to the login page when I first try to access a website, instead nothing will load.

You have to enter your school e-mail ID and password on the login screen for wireless. I just double checked my e-mail manually and confirmed the e-mail account and password are both fine.

I just had another little fiasco trying to get help from IT yesterday. I spent almost 30 minutes standing around and nothing was done. The impression I get is that there are IT people in the computer lab, who are only familiar with and usually responsible for helping students who are using the computers in the lab, which all connect to the internet via LAN. I show them my laptop and describe my problem and they are stumped. They then try to send me to a secluded office down the hall where the big shots who manage the school's network are (as well as the servers I bet), but students don't normally enter that room and everyone is perpetually busy. So the front desk to that room is usually empty, or if someone is there (as they were yesterday) I'm told that no one is there who can help me and I'm directed back to the computer lab I just came from.

All that happened yesterday is one of the people from the computer lab spoke to one of the IT people who was in a meeting and he said he was going to check the network and make sure everything was fine with it. I would have loved to stick around but I had a class to get to. Tomorrow afternoon when I'm free I'm going back there and sticking around until I at least get to speak with one of the IT guys who run the network.

I've thought of another possibility but it seems remote. Is it possible I was banned from accessing the network wirelessly? A lot of the stuff I look at with my laptop in school isn't exactly educational (YouTube and Fark.com) but I've never looked at anything overtly bad like porn there either. And if they were going to ban me for the content I regularly accessed, wouldn't they ban the account I login to the network with instead of my MAC address? My MAC address being banned is something I would like to test, but my wireless card doesn't have an option set a locally administered address.

 

Well, if you want test out if your wireless MAC address is the problem, see if someone you know has a USB wireless stick, install it on your M1210, disable your built-in wireless, and see if you can access the login page.

 

Well, you can see if your mac address is banned by connecting to their network through an ethernet cord. There is a chance that your mac address is simply not given privileges. I know at my friend's house, he must manually type the mac addresses of all the computers he wants to allow on his network, wired or wireless, to enable access to connect. But I almost immediately ruled this possibility out because you said all of your friends could connect to the network fine without doing anything. Plus the fact that the sheer amount of time to enter every single mac address is unbelievable.

Have you tried what Reezin14 suggested?

 

check if there is a proxy that you need to setup for your school..mine has one and it has the same symptoms if not setup correctly.

 

I can't connect to my college's at all. They really are terrible. It's mostly because they bolster up security with no thought as to the consequences.

 

Sorry for not reading the whole thread, so I'm not sure if this has been said. But what happened to a girl in my dorm is she had the network set as an ad-hoc network so that it was excellent, but she wasn't online.

 

Thanks for the idea ExZeroEx, no harm in checking something else. I just double checked the connection and it is infrastructure.


I also tried Reezin14's suggestion, and the connection would time out at the very first step...


I went back to the computer lab day before yesterday and the tech I spoke to originally a week ago did spend quite a bit of time with my trying to fix it. He said that some other students have experienced the same problem, but they were using Vista. I'm using XP.

He confirmed my PC was connected to the network, and looked at some settings within my wireless management. He played with numerous settings in Internet Explorer. He shut down my firewall and antivirus protection. None of it worked. He got on the phone with one of the senior IT people who run the network, and got the exact URL for the school's wireless login page. When typed into my browser, it wouldn't load... The IT person also told him that they don't do tech support for laptops. They provide the wireless service and that's it...

He had two last suggestions before he got pulled away to help other students. 1: Download the latest drivers for my wireless card. 2: Use system restore to revert to a time when I could still connect wirelessly.

I tried doing system restore on the spot to more than a month ago when I could still connect, but system restore didn't work because it said no changes have been made to my system in that time. Downloading the latest drivers for my wireless card is the first thing I did when I got home, so we'll see if that has any effect when I go back to school on Monday. The guy who tried to help me was really trying and I appreciated it, but I get the feeling that if updating my wireless drivers doesn't fix the problem, that I am basically SOL.

Reformatting would be the next step which is a big pain. Of course, if I were to reformat I would want to just take the plunge into Vista and be done with it. But then he said other students have been experiencing this who are using Vista, so...bleh.


Thanks once again for all of your insight and ideas. I'll let you all know Monday how things turned out.

 

Well atleast you know that the problem is on their part, please let us know what was going on and how it was solved, so if anyone else has an similar problem we can try to help them.