The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Unsecured networks not showing up in list of networks

    Discussion in 'Networking and Wireless' started by AmyP, May 9, 2009.

  1. AmyP

    AmyP Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    15
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hello,

    I live in a college dorm and a few of my friends have unsecured networks which they don't mind me/friends using. Got a new laptop recently with Vista, and I was able to connect to these last week, but then randomly something stopped working - could connect to a network, but not use the internet. No idea. Anyway, I installed a new driver from my laptop manufacturer's website, but now I can't see the unsecured networks in the list anymore! They are still listed as "automatically connect to" in my "saved networks" folder but they do not automatically connect and can't find a way to do so. Also can't find a properties checkbox or anything about listing unsecured networks. There are usually about 4-5 secured networks listed, so I'm pretty sure there's nothing wrong with the card. It should be able to find these. Any ideas?

    Thanks.
     
  2. kegobeer

    kegobeer 1 hr late but moving fast

    Reputations:
    836
    Messages:
    3,682
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    It could be several things. Among them are: the router broadcasts 802.11b/g, but your wifi card (new drivers) doesn't see those bands (just an example, ymmv), your wifi card doesn't play well with that particular router, the router isn't broadcasting the ssid and your old wifi drivers scanned and displayed them anyway, but the new drivers no longer show hidden ssids, or you need to delete the saved network profiles and start fresh.