After an intense morning yoga routine, you make yourself a cup of chai tea, add a dash of chili to your avocado toast, sit down at your desk, turn on your laptop, and begin logging into your favorite apps.
However, your perfect day starts to sour as you realize you aren’t able to access the internet. Your eyes dart over your screen, eventually landing on the WiFi icon in the corner, marked with an exclamation point that tells you your tea will be cold before you get a chance to start anything.
Like most of life’s problems, your WiFi connection only seems to fail when you need it most. To help you rejoin the 21st century as quickly as possible, we’ve listed three fast fixes you can use to get your WiFi network up and running again.
Let’s get started!
Three reasons your laptop isn’t connecting to WiFi
1. If multiple devices can’t connect to your WiFi: Check and reset your router.
The first thing you should do when trying to troubleshoot tricky WiFi is to see if it’s working on any of your devices. If your WiFi connecting is working on your other devices, you know your laptop is the problem; skip to fix number two below. Otherwise, it means there’s a problem with your WiFi router or provider. You may also need to try restarting your modem and router.
Unfortunately, both of these are pretty common, and there’s not much you can do. The first thing to try is resetting your router, which involves unplugging it for at least sixty seconds and then plugging it back in. It’ll take a few minutes, but if this fixes it, you’ll be back to the rest of your day within five minutes of plugging your router back in.
If this doesn’t work, then you could be in for a long haul. This means that there’s likely a problem with your provider’s end. Maybe they’re experiencing an outage, or perhaps there’s some other error they’re working to fix. Either way, you’ll need to give them a call to figure out why your WiFi isn’t working.
2. Restart your laptop
If your laptop is the only device having issues with your WiFi, then you can safely assume it’s the source of the problem. And like any problem that starts with your computer, the first solution to try is restarting your device.
Restarting your laptop at least once a week is an excellent habit to get into, even if you don’t have an immediate reason to do so. The longer your laptop is running, the more chances for things to run incorrectly, processes to get backed up, and issues to persist.
When you restart your laptop, you give all of these things a chance to refresh and try again. This will solve any issue with your WiFi that’s temporary, so it’s definitely worth giving a shot.
3. Run Windows Troubleshooter
If you’re still having issues after restarting your WiFi and your router, then it’s time to get nitty-gritty with your laptop, starting with Windows Troubleshooter.
Windows has a built-in tool for determining why your WiFi isn’t working. It doesn’t always get the issue right, but like the check engine light in your car, it’ll point you in the right direction.
To run the troubleshooter, open the Start menu, click Settings, and click Update & Security.
In the window that appears, click select Troubleshoot, Internet Connections, and Run the troubleshooter. A new window will appear. Follow the instructions within it to troubleshoot your connection and see what’s causing the issue.
When you get a result, revisit Google and see if you can find any relevant solutions to your problem.
Are you still having WiFi connection problems with your laptop?
If you weren’t able to solve your problem by contacting your provider, restarting your devices, or searching your troubleshooter results online, then it’s time to bring in the professionals. The tech experts at ScreenWorks can have your laptop up and running again so that you can get back to work quickly.