[SOLVED] Problem connecting to school network

[eaturice]

Hi all,
I bought a Lenovo Flex 5 AMD 14" last month.
Wifi connection has been an issue at the start. I am using it at school and every now and then I would not be able to connect to the school network.
I tried disabling and enabling the adapter but still wouldnt connect.

I found that I had to connect the laptop to my phone's wifi hotspot, and then connect to the school network and it would work.

Anyone knows what is wrong with my machine?
Thanks

 

[Ralston18]

On the laptop are you certain that the onboard wired network adapter is disabled?

Only one network adapter, either wired or wireless, should be enabled.

Are you able to run "ipconfig /all" via the Command Prompt and post the results?

Does the school provide some sort of guidance explaining how to configure the laptop to join the school's wireless network?

Or perhaps have some sort "Helpdesk" or similar support group you can contact?

 

[eaturice]

On the laptop are you certain that the onboard wired network adapter is disabled?

Only one network adapter, either wired or wireless, should be enabled.

Are you able to run "ipconfig /all" via the Command Prompt and post the results?

Does the school provide some sort of guidance explaining how to configure the laptop to join the school's wireless network?

Or perhaps have some sort "Helpdesk" or similar support group you can contact?

Yes, I have the wired adapter disabled and only the wireless adapter enabled.
I had no problem with my old surface pro 4 connecting to the school network, only experiencing the issue with this new Flex 5 laptop.
The only problem that I am not sure is that it works fine for some days, but other days it would not connect properly.
I am wondering whether if it is the wireless adapter used in the lenovo laptop. I have heard that it is not stable.

 

[Ralston18]

Overall, if the problem is intermittent ("works fine for some days....") more trouble shooting is needed.

Wireless adapters need to fully function in two ways: send (TX) and receive (RX).

Most adapters can manage receiving much better than sending. Still interference or loss of signal strength either way likely has some threshold value leading to failure.

Try the Lenovo laptop at other school locations to determine if the problem continues.

Try the Lenovo laptop at other wireless locations to determine if the problem continues.

I am unable to address whether the Lenovo's wireless adapter is "stable" or not.

However you can easily obtain more information:

On the Lenovo laptop, run and post the results of "ipconfig /all".

Then, if necessary, more information (quite a bit of information for that matter) can be obtained via the "netsh wlan" command set.

To get a sense of that try "netsh wlan show all".

Still, to avoid getting ourselves overwhelmed, simply try the location testing and run "ipconfig /all".

Objective being to narrow down the problem source either directly or by elimination.