Wireless connected but "you have no internet connection"

[Schwim]

Hi there everyone!

My wife purchased a new Dell XPS computer to upgrade to current gen hardware but we're having a hell of time with it in regards to network connection.

First we tried wired connection but it kept dropping Skype calls and she would get kicked out of her games due to spotty connection.

So we connected her computer wirelessly, which solved all of the problems stated above but when she comes back from leaving the computer idle for a while, the browser states that she doesn't have an internet connection although the network monitor in the task bar states that she's still connected to the wireless network. All we have to do is either disconnect and reconnect or move her to the other wireless router and the issue is resolved... until the next time the computer is left idle for a while.

Can anyone tell me how to solve or at least troubleshoot this issue? It's kind of beaten the new-computer warm fuzzy right out of us.

Thanks for your time!

 

[Tim Locke]

OK. First. Is the wifi adapter set to turn off to save power? Turn that off.
Wired connections are usually reliable. Have you tried a different ethernet cable?
While this unreliability has been going on have you rebooted your router?
IIRC you have a fair few devices in your network. Is your DHCP range big enough on the router. What router is it?

When the pc is in the state where it says it is connected but has no internet connection have you been to Network and Sharing centre in settings and then looked at detail/properties and also in that state done an ipconfig /all with the command prompt.

Try turning off ALL sleep modes.

As this machine is new, have you been off to Dell's site with the service tag to see if there any updates? The machine may be new to you but there could easily be new network drivers for example in the Dell site.


Any one of more of these things could be a problem.

jk
Do you have a convenient 12 year old to help with this?
/jk

 

[Schwim]

OK. First. Is the wifi adapter set to turn off to save power? Turn that off.
Wired connections are usually reliable. Have you tried a different ethernet cable?
While this unreliability has been going on have you rebooted your router?
IIRC you have a fair few devices in your network. Is your DHCP range big enough on the router. What router is it?

When the pc is in the state where it says it is connected but has no internet connection have you been to Network and Sharing centre in settings and then looked at detail/properties and also in that state done an ipconfig /all with the command prompt.

Try turning off ALL sleep modes.

As this machine is new, have you been off to Dell's site with the service tag to see if there any updates? The machine may be new to you but there could easily be new network drivers for example in the Dell site.


Any one of more of these things could be a problem.

jk
Do you have a convenient 12 year old to help with this?
/jk

Hi there Tim and thanks very much for your help in the matter. We do have a 16 YO handy but unless it's a cell phone she's about as useful as we are in matters such as this.

Before I go into more detail, can I ask how I would check for sleep settings on wifi in Win 10? This is a PC, so no hardware switch and it seemed like a sleep type thing to me but I can't find anything relating to it in either networking or power modes.

Now I'll go into more detail as to what we've done.

WIRED ISSUE:

First, We're not capped on DHCP connections, we usually have more wireless connected successfully when everyone's home and social networking.

I have rebooted router and tried three different cables. I also bypassed the network switch completely and connected her to the cat 5 receptacle at the wall just to cut a couple items out of the mix.

When she's suffering this issue, I don't have any similar issues while streaming video, gaming or on vent. It seems only with her device/connection.

It's not all the time. She's gone hours at a time while not noticing anything and other times, it happens so often, she gives up trying to talk to people.

WIRELESS:

This is a brand new problem since I only connected her wirelessly this afternoon and breathed a sigh of relief having dodged the bullet of intermittent connection issues. When she came up tonight to hop on Skype and load a website, she got the dreaded "no internet" warning in the browser. I came up and saw that it said she was connected to her wireless connection, so I just connected her to the other router and she was off and running. The next time the issue occurs, I will definitely start going through the steps you suggested and report the findings.

We'd love to have her connected via wired connection but I can't even begin to figure out how to troubleshoot further than I already have. It seems like one of those crappy deals where it happens so intermittently and for such a short period of time that I just start throwing money at it.

 

[Schwim]

I found the power management properties for the network adapters in the device manager. Both the ethernet and wireless adapter were set to allow Windows to disable it to save power. I've unchecked both and will keep an eye on it.

This of course won't solve the intermittent wired issue but I imagine it's got a good chance of solving the wireless one.

 

[Schwim]

Well, I spoke to soon as she still was disconnected this morning. Found another article discussing the wireless adapter being put to sleep by the power plan so changed the settings there as well. Perhaps that will be the fix.

Power of Windows, I suppose.

 

[MrHudson]

There is a issue with connection on wireless, seems cell phones are the culprits, I fixed mine by uninstalling driver, using compatibility troubleshooter and installing driver under XP sp3. I have connection now.. yesterday was the accumulated update, I was at my sister house Wi-Fi off her, whole time sis was on her phone, my download was coming in at 500 Kbps to 2.2 Mbps,, when sis disconnected her phone from internet my download jumped to 50 Mbps.

 

[Tim Locke]

There is a issue with connection on wireless, seems cell phones are the culprits, I fixed mine by uninstalling driver, using compatibility troubleshooter and installing driver under XP sp3. I have connection now.. yesterday was the accumulated update, I was at my sister house Wi-Fi off her, whole time sis was on her phone, my download was coming in at 500 Kbps to 2.2 Mbps,, when sis disconnected her phone from internet my download jumped to 50 Mbps.

You might check if her cell phone had 'hot-spot' turned on. I wonder if your PC reconnected via her phone while she had an internet connection. This would have certainly given you a slower connection.
Newish iPhones and some Androids have a built in hotspot. Which is very useful in places like hospitals which charge a fortune for their internet connections.