Hi everyone, I'm new to SI but looking forward to learning a lot.
Something went wrong with my laptop last night and I can't figure it out. I'm using Windows 10 and Internet Explorer 11.
I ran a utility, Advanced System Optimizer, that I run every week to defragment the hard drive and the registry, to get rid of cookies and a few other things.
I was also playing around with my default programs to make Internet Explorer the default rather than Edge just because I prefer it, for better or worse.
Anyway, the utility ran and I let it fix everything, including defragmenting the registry and restarting.
When the laptop restarted I had no internet and I still don't. I don't think it's my internet service provider because every other thing we have- another laptop, a desktop, iPads and phones, still have internet. I also don't think it's the router because everything else has to go through the router to get to the internet. The laptop even says it's connected to the router and that it has internet access in the Network and Sharing Center. When I run the troubleshooter for internet connections it says there's no problem. But when I open Internet Explorer or Edge, there's no connection and I get the typical error message that says I'm not connected to a network. If I run another application that doesn't use a browser it also tells me there's no connection.
I connected the laptop to the router with a cable in case it might be a wireless problem. It recognizes the connection and says everything's okay but again, my browser doesn't have a connection and neither does anything else. I even disconnected everything from power, the laptop, the router and the access point from my service provider, and then restarted everything- access point first, then the router and finally my laptop.
I've had some problems previously with Advanced System Optimizer where it will update a driver or do whatever it does and my mouse pad won't work, or the microphone or the speakers won't work but nothing like this and I guess I'm not even sure that was the source of the problem. When those things happen ordinarily they fix themselves if I run the utility again.
It almost seems like something in the router is blocking the laptop from getting "outside" but if that was true I don't understand why the troubleshooter would say it doesn't have any problems when it tries to connect to microsoft.com? I went into the router on another computer and didn't see anything odd about the settings or anything else but I'm far from an expert so most of the settings and/or options in the router are just default settings and I'm not sure I'd know if anything was "wrong". The router is a D-Link DIR-655.
At this point I'm at a loss so I'd be very grateful if anyone has any ideas. Thanks!! |
