Troubleshooting Wireless Connection Issues

	Home \| Site Map \| Net How To \| Net Issues \| Cisco How To \| Articles \| Forums \| Services \| Donations \| Careers \| About Us \| Contact Us\|

Troubleshooting Wireless Connection Issues

Can see Wireless but no network connectivity

Intermittent connectivity

Lose Wireless connection when resuming from standby or sleep

Troubleshooting logs

Can see Wireless but no network connectivity

Case 1: Incorrect Authentication settings: the Wireless router was setup using WEP while wireless computer was setup to use WPA.

Case 2: the client enter Incorrect encryption key.

Case 3: All XP and Vista wireless computers have the same issue. Upgrading the firmware on the wireless router fixed the problem.

Case 4: MAC address filtering is enabled and block the computer wilress.

Case 5: All wireless laptops can use the wireless AP except one. Resolution: install the latest wireless driver.

Case 6: The wireless AP was setup to use 802.11b and wireless NIC was setup to use 802.11a.

Intermittent connectivity

Case 1: The wireless client loses connectivity every 3 minutes or so. The Eapol.log file shows the EAPOL component running through various authentication states. The problem is IEEE 802.1X authentication is enabled on the wireless client and is not enabled on the wireless AP.

Case 2: installing the most recent version of the wireless AP firmware fixed it.

Case 3: install the latest wireless driver.

Lose Wireless connection when resuming from standby or sleep

Case 1: Setup the power to high. Please refer to this post:

Vista: Wireless connectivity issue

Case 2: Installing the most recent version of the wireless network adapter driver fixed the probelm.

There are no visible wireless networks

Wireless Networks tab is not present for the properties of the wireless network adapter

Case 1: The wireless radio button is in the off position: This is Dell laptop. You need to press fn + F2 to enable wireless. More cases can be found this post:

Wireless is not available because the wireless switch is off

Case 2: The Wireless Zero Configuration or Wireless Configuration services are not running

Troubleshooting logs

Wzctrace.log file and Eapol.log.

To collect the log files, follow these steps:

On the Windows XP desktop, click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
At the command prompt, type netsh ras set tra * ena, and then press ENTER. This command enables tracing.
Restart your computer.
Note the time, and then reproduce your wireless problem. Write down how long it took you to reproduce the problem.
Move to the %windir%\Tracing folder. This folder should contain the following files:

Wzctrace.log
Eapol.log
Rastls.log
Wzcdlg.log
Xmlprovi.log
Netman.log
Netshell.log

Have these log files ready to send to PSS for analysis together with the time that it took you to reproduce the problem.
Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
To disable tracing, type netsh ras set tra * dis, and then press ENTER.
Restart your computer.

Post your questions, comments, feedbacks and suggestions