Dell doesn't want to play!

[Michael Rolls]

My Dell is driving me mad today. It keeps losing the internet, yet this computer - the old Vista machine - and my i-Pad aren't having any problems. I've tried switching the Dell off and back on, I've tried switching the router off and on but it is still flaky. Now it is saying internet facility is switched off and I can't find anything to switch it on. This has been going on since 0500 - yesterday it was fine apart from a brief hiccup in the afternoon, resolved by turning off the router and turning it back on
Any ideas please? It's a Dell Inspiron 1500, bought in September 2021

[klondike]

Wired or WiFi?

[Diasi]

My Dell is driving me mad today. It keeps losing the internet, yet this computer - the old Vista machine - and my i-Pad aren't having any problems. I've tried switching the Dell off and back on, I've tried switching the router off and on but it is still flaky. Now it is saying internet facility is switched off and I can't find anything to switch it on. This has been going on since 0500 - yesterday it was fine apart from a brief hiccup in the afternoon, resolved by turning off the router and turning it back on
Any ideas please? It's a Dell Inspiron 1500, bought in September 2021

The fact that two items have no internet issue but the Dell does indicates that the fault is with the Dell.

There seem to be lot of questions about Dells having this problem.

https://tinyurl.com/5598r7e4

[Michael Rolls]

it's wi-fi and, should have said W10. S-I-L is here for the weekend, so two i_pads, 2 phones, and 2 computers have no problems, so it must be the Dell. I'll drop into the local repair shop after Mary goes on Tuesday - I can cope without it for the while
Thanks, guys

[Michael Rolls]

This is crazy. Today the Dell is woking perfectly. I'll see how/if anything develops

[klondike]

Blame the weather. It's a handy scapegoat even if it's nothing to do with the problem.

Did you read the article Phil linked to? I only looked briefly but it seemed it went over the basics. Ah looking again I see it's window 11 which won't be a perfect match but should be close.

[dextrous63]

My desktop (not a dell) went through a spate of doing this, and resetting the network card used to fix it.  What was weird is that the internal clock wasn't always accurate, and it seemed to be this disparity with the actual time that caused the issue.  After a while (and probably some overnight update), it cured itself.

Odd though.

[klondike]

Most computers are set to synchronise their clock to internet based time servers. No internet no sync. Mind you their clocks should still run and be pretty accurate even if powered down.

Motherboards used to have batteries that kept the clock running amongst other things and if they failed the clock would start at the Unix timestamp beginning - Jan 1 1970. I know they swapped over to those big button cells but I'm not sure they have any at all these days. Might just be some small rechargeable one I suppose.

Wrong clocks used to mess up SSL certificates causing them to be marked as invalid as the computer date would be outside the certificate validity period. Not sure if that still happens either.