Forum Discussion
I'm switching from Xfinity and still have both network but my windows 11 laptop says can't use T-Mobile WiFi
I'm switching from Xfinity and still have both network but my windows 11 laptop says can't use T-Mobile WiFi when i select it and connect, try to.
Unsure what windows troubleshooting I need to do but it's odd and must be a unique issue since I've not seen it on the board.
I did a pc reset after trying a restore and it worked.
I realize I had network drives mounted via old network which may have been the problem?
Did you reset the adapter to clear out any parameters it might have?
Resetting the network in Windows 11
- Press Win + I to open the Settings screen and go to Network & internet > Advanced network settings.
- Click Network reset.
- Click Reset now and then Yes. Then restart the computer for the network settings to take effect.
OR check out this information as a reinstall of the adapter driver might be just the ticket.
The attempts to take it from one network to the other and then attempting to take it back may just have settings all jacked up. I have had a lot of experience with W10 and multiple systems over the years but not with Win11. I have moved on to mainly MacOS or Linux now which outnumber the 2 Win10 clients on my network now. I got fed up with messing with Windows and have been moving more into Linux. Windows 10 updates started taking way too long. I found a better solution for me.
As you are working on the client to try to get it working run problem steps recorder. Just press the Windows "Start" key on the keyboard and type psr.exe and launch it. You can start recording everything you are doing and then have a record of everything you have done. If you need to go back and review things you have a record of what you did in a file that is compressed and available to you. Microsoft developed problem steps recorder as a support tool. It is a very useful utility to have. It is built into Windows.
Reset did not work, it seems to just grab onto the xfinity network and “can’t connect” to new networks, at least at home.
I did a recording for Microsoft support, so waitng for their reply. I may hit up tmobile as well, but having the two wifi networks may be the complication, though not an issue on my other phones, TV, Mac computer.
It is probably going to attempt to connect to the stronger wireless signal and if the xfinity is up and it has been known it will probably continue to latch on to that signal.
When I turn off the stronger xfin network, it still says "can't connect to network". I updated all the drivers in my Dell windows 11 Inspiron laptop, but no luck. I've reset the network settings without luck.
Unsure what other suggestion I was given, but it does connect with wpa2 on my xfin router, and setting tmobile to that did not help, by itself.
Tmobile was unable to provide assistence and Dell wants to charge a lot to assist, as its out of warrantee 2 yrs.
Use "system information" to get the details of the adapter. What is it, what is its capability? If that is an Intel wireless adapter get the driver from the vendor that manufactured the adapter.
So, was that Dell Inspiron laptop on Windows 11 out of the box or was it an upgrade to W11 from W10?
With different HP laptops I have had I always ran the Intel network adapters as they seemed to be more current than the ones from HP. Sometimes I found it useful to rip out the current driver and start from the beginning and reinstall the driver. You can try just loading the new driver if there is a more current one from the adapter vendor. It might just be a driver issue however you really need to know what channel is the adapter latching onto on the Xfinity network. If the laptop is only a couple of years old it should still have a pretty decent wireless adapter inside.
It was upgraded from 10.i updated all drivers from Dell but will try Intel.
If it were me I would make a bootable USB stick with Ubuntu and boot it live and just see if the laptop will connect to the T-Mobile gateway with a Linux OS and a driver from the different OS. That would pretty much tell you if it is the adapter or Windows 11 being a pain. You have drivers for the adapter which should work in Windows 11. If you could get a live Ubuntu load connected to the T-Mobile gateway with that adapter I would have to question what Windows 11 and the current driver is doing different. Making a bootable USB drive with Ubuntu is so easy to do.
Do look at what system information reports on the adapter. Is it 802.11ac or 802.11ax or what?
Heck I don't even know if that is an Intel adapter. It could be some other vendor. I am not a big Dell user. I have the Alienware machine but I have not favored Dell machines. I don't even like Windows much. I enjoy Linux and MacOS. Maybe I am strange but I like things that don't fight with me all the time.
I'm not sure about that. It's the Dell computer issue. Converting it to Linux makes it a different computer, even if that would solve it. And if the Linux driver worked, it would be a windows don't issue?
What I am saying is if it will boot a live Ubuntu image with a different driver and connect to the T-Mobile gateway that seems to point to the driver in Windows not the adapter itself. I don't know if the Xfinity is 802.11ac or 802.11ax radios. If the laptop adapter and driver work with 802.11ac but not with 802.11ax then knowing what the adapter is to try to get it to connect to the T-Mobile gateway will be helpful.
If the laptop is not very old and the adapter is 802.11ac it should be able to connect to the T-Mobile gateway without too much effort but that does not seem to be working. I am just curious as to what the adapter is capable of as I don't know what we are missing by not looking and knowing its capability.
With the Dell laptop model specifications for the wireless adapter then we would know its capability. Booting with a live Linux image on a bootable USB drive does not touch the Windows environment what so ever. It would just be a test and then you shut down, remove the USB drive and then boot back into Windows just as you always have. The live image just runs in RAM so it would have nothing to do with the main drive or the Windows load. But that would just be a test. We can stay focused on trying to get it connected with Windows. No hay problema.
