Hey everyone! I'm having a strange issue with my Windows 11 laptop not connecting to my hostel's Wi-Fi. The weird thing is that my phone and tablet work just fine with the Wi-Fi, but my laptop doesn't even see the network in the list of available networks. Oddly enough, my laptop connects to this network perfectly when I'm in other parts of campus, so it's not a credentials issue or a ban—something's just up in my hostel room. I've tried a bunch of troubleshooting steps like resetting the network settings and running the Hardware Troubleshooter, which even told me that Windows wasn't set to install drivers. I've checked for updates, and there's nothing new. The signal must be there since other devices connect with no problem. Do you think the Wi-Fi might be on a different band (like 5GHz)? I don't see any errors in Device Manager for my Wi-Fi adapter. Any help or ideas would be super appreciated—this is really frustrating!
3 Answers
First off, make sure your laptop's Wi-Fi card supports both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Sometimes devices just can't see certain signals based on compatibility. You can also check the Wi-Fi analyzer app on your phone to see what channels the hostel's Wi-Fi is using—it might be operating on a channel your laptop can't handle. It could also be that it’s just running a different channel width that’s not supported by your device.
This might be a signal issue, actually. Try using a Wi-Fi analyzer tool on your phone to check the signal strength and the channels being used. Sometimes a network is using a DFS channel that older devices struggle with, especially on 5GHz. That might explain why your laptop isn't seeing the Wi-Fi in your room.
It might be that your Wi-Fi adapter is acting all funky. I had a customer who had a similar issue—turns out replacing the adapter did the trick because theirs just wouldn’t connect to a cheap phone hotspot. Might not hurt to test your adapter on another laptop to see if it's really the problem or if it's something else.
Haha, true! But my adapter is still connecting to other networks so I doubt that's it. Good thought though!
Thanks for the suggestion! I checked and my Wi-Fi card does support both bands. I'll try the analyzer app to see if it reveals anything.