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I have a WPA2 secured network with a visible SSID at home that works perfectly fine with a Dell laptop,a HP netbook and sundry mobile phones. When I try connecting my sister's Lenovo G470, it refuses to detect the wifi network no matter what, but shows up the neighbors' networks. The Lenovo also works correctly at her office. Both laptops run Windows 7. Already tried/checked the following:

  • Manually configure wifi network settings (copied over from the Dell)
  • Ensure there is no MAC address filtering on the router.
  • Ensure router DHCP server is not running out of addresses to assign (I have set it to allocate upto 10).
  • Reboot laptop, router etc.

Is this a known problem, and is there anything else one could try?

Update - The problematic Lenovo uses Windows 7 Home Basic while the Dell that works uses Home Premium and the HP netbook uses Starter edition - if that makes any difference.

Further update - It is able to connect if I reboot into safe mode with networking. However in 'normal' mode it shows up the network sporadically, and then says there was an error connecting to it. All the network parameters, password, encryption, etc etc are EXACTLY the same as they are on the Dell.

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    Is it possible it is a wifi protocol issue? Like the AP supports 802.11g and the lenovo only supports 802.11ab. Or the AP is set to N only? I would generally recommend lowering the security to WEP for testing but if it cannot even see the SSID then I doubt it would help.
    – Paul
    Commented Sep 23, 2011 at 6:41
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    Also ensure that the router is set to broadcast the SSID. I know the Dell is able to connect but some devices will work when connected manually to an access point that is not broadcasting the SSID, and some will not.
    – Dan
    Commented Sep 23, 2011 at 14:44
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    The SSID is visible, as mentioned; I've not set it to hidden.
    – Rex
    Commented Sep 26, 2011 at 5:34
  • I had a similar problem with a Z570, after refreshing the copy of Windows, the wifi adapter could not see the router. I never got a resolution - but I had a tiny USB wifi adapter on hand so I continue to use that.
    – CJM
    Commented May 2, 2014 at 12:16

3 Answers 3

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Check your router's settings for the encryption method used for the WPA2 protocol.

My router supports both WPA & WPA2, using both TKIP & AES encryption. But TKIP is the lesser of the encryptions, it came out with WPA, and is usually 'linked' to being used with WPA.

AES is 'linked' to WPA2. Apologies, hard to explain the relationships, AES goes with WPA2, TKIP with WPA... something like that.

I had issues in the past because I wasn't aware of the 'linking' and had WPA2 with TKIP, and I suppose some of my devices didn't like the combination. Choosing AES with WPA2 resolved most of the issues, but I also found some of my older devices didn't like WPA2 (sigh). So today my router does 'WPA/WPA2' with 'TKIP/AES'. Not my favorite configuration, but it's got everything working finally.

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  • That is just what my router uses too..when I select WPA/WPA2, the only option available to me is AES. I'm just surprised that a new Lenovo laptop should have so much trouble connecting to a router that's not quite old either.
    – Rex
    Commented Sep 26, 2011 at 18:11
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i had the similar problem with my G480 it was not connecting to any network and keep giving me message "can't connect to this network" at the end i saw a YouTube video and one of the solution it suggested was to re install Lenovo power management software dose not make much sense but it did the trick

update : seems i have jumped the gun next morning i had the same problem again wifi wasnt connecting again with exactly same symptoms. after further googleing (on phone :-S ) ran this command netsh int ip reset resetlog.txtwhich solved the problem for now ....

Update [Apr-2020]:Problem kept coming back with no apparent reason finally i bought a cheap WiFi mini PCI-E module under 10$ and replaced it. No problems since then .

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    Although this may answer the question, you should give a more detailed description of the linked content and explain how it relates to the question. This will help ensure that this answer remains useful in the event the linked page is removed or goes offline. For more information, see this Meta Stack Exchange post.
    – bwDraco
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 16:43
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it seems if WIFI router's NTP is not configure it uses some default NTP provided by router's manufactures to sync time, which fails to work sometimes and router time goes back to 2003 or time when router is manufactured which stops some WIFI clients from connecting. configuring router's NTP server fixed it for me.

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