I have a router ADSL connected to my laptop by Wi-Fi. After a while I disabled my network device (about an hour), I don't succeed in re-enabling it, as if my system had put it out. If I want to have it available, I have to restart the laptop! Is this normal? Thanks. Giovanni
What's happening is that your unspecified model access point or wireless router, has decided that your unspecified model wireless card, in your unspecified model laptop, has disappeared or gone away. After a while, it will disconnect and make the IP address available to the next user. On the better wireless clients (actually better drivers), when the client wakes up or comes out of standby, it will immediately attempt to renew the DHCP lease. If the IP address and MAC address are still in the routers DHCP lease table, it will renew and continue on normally. If not, it will restart the DHCP negotiation process and obtain a new lease and IP address.
As you might suspect, there are plenty of places in this process of waking up that can cause a connection loss or failure. The most common is that the driver simply forgets to renew the DHCP lease. Meanwhile the router has expired the connection and cleared the MAC address table.
There's also various effects depending on how you disabled the wireless device. You can turn it on and off with:
A switch on your laptop.
An key combination.
Enable/disable on the driver icon in the system tray.
Control Panel -> Network -> Wireless -> enable/disable
BIOS wireless (MiniPCI) on/off.
Wireless Zero Config manual/auto connect. Each one can screw up in some way or in combination with the others. From your description, I can't tell which one or combination might be the culprit. In addition, putting the laptop into standby or hibernate can cause disconnects.
Anyway, instead of rebooting, try:
Right click on the wireless icon in the system tray. Select "repair". See if that kick starts the driver into cooperation.
Rigth click on the wireless icon in the system tray. Select enable/disable and see if that helps.
Start -> Run -> cmd IPCONFIG /RELEASE wait a few seconds IPCONFIG /RENEW That should kick start the DHCP client and force a DHCP renewal.
Check for updated wireless drivers. Bugs are common with older drivers.
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