stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2021-09-06 03:46 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2021-09-06 03:46 pm
Entry tags:
Connectivity with Connection and Connecting
Over the last few weeks, my desktop's Internet connection got slower and slower. It took a while to notice because it was gradual. Then suddenly--BINK! We had Big Problems.
My desktop stopped connecting properly with Trollboy, our WiFi network. Sometimes Trollboy wouldn't connect at all, sometimes he would connect with a S-L-O-W connection (1 mb or less per second), and sometimes he would connect for a while and suddenly cut himself off. The only way I could get online was by using the cell modem function on my phone.
The problem puzzled me. Every other device in the house could connect with Trollboy. Only my computer was affected. This meant Trollboy himself wasn't the problem. Also, my computer could connect with the WiFi on my phone, on Darwin's phone, and a local Xfinity hotspot. This meant my computer COULD connect with the Internet; it just wouldn't do it through Trollboy. So where did the problem lie?
Darwin and I spent hours on Sunday trying to fix the problem. We did all the usual stuff (reset the modem, reboot the computer, check the physical connections). Nothing worked. So we dug into esoteric stuff, checking TCP IP setting, resetting codes in the CMD prompt, and more. The stuff we tried got more and more complicated, and I was digging into parts of my computer system I didn't even know existed. By midnight, we still had nothing, and it was time to call it quits.
This morning, I did the thing every computer user dreads: I called AT&T's tech support.
Here I discovered that if you tell the AI that answers AT&T's support line you're having an Internet connection problem, the AI runs a quick diagnostic and says, "We're finding no problems on your line. Good-bye!" Then it hangs up on you. I finally got through to a human being by just repeating, "I need help" every time the AI asked me what was wrong. The human in question, a very nice young man named Sebastian, listened to the details of my problem, clicked around on his keyboard . . . and told me there was nothing wrong with my WiFi, and have a nice day.
Okay, then.
Darwin said it was probably time to try a factory reset. There was a code or a system that needed a complete reboot, and a factory reset was the only way to find it. I was coming to the reluctant conclusion that he was right. Problem was, we didn't know for sure that a factory reset would solve the problem, but a factory reset would definitely wipe all my programs, and I would spend at least a day reloading all of them before my computer would be usable again, a process I wasn't eager to endure.
And then I remembered something. Back in the Old Days, when WiFi was a new thing, computers didn't come with an onboard WiFi receiver. You had to buy one separately and plug it into your tower. Maybe the problem was with my computer's WiFi receiver. If it were, a new one would probably solve the problem.
I drove down to Best Buy and snagged a plug-and-play adapter/receiver. Back home, I downloaded its driver with my cell phone as modem, plugged the adapter into my computer, and held my breath. The adapter instantly found Trollboy and asked if I wanted to connect to him. I said that I did, thank you very much, and here's the password. POOF! I had full-blown Internet.
And it doesn't disconnect and it's fast.
Man.
My desktop stopped connecting properly with Trollboy, our WiFi network. Sometimes Trollboy wouldn't connect at all, sometimes he would connect with a S-L-O-W connection (1 mb or less per second), and sometimes he would connect for a while and suddenly cut himself off. The only way I could get online was by using the cell modem function on my phone.
The problem puzzled me. Every other device in the house could connect with Trollboy. Only my computer was affected. This meant Trollboy himself wasn't the problem. Also, my computer could connect with the WiFi on my phone, on Darwin's phone, and a local Xfinity hotspot. This meant my computer COULD connect with the Internet; it just wouldn't do it through Trollboy. So where did the problem lie?
Darwin and I spent hours on Sunday trying to fix the problem. We did all the usual stuff (reset the modem, reboot the computer, check the physical connections). Nothing worked. So we dug into esoteric stuff, checking TCP IP setting, resetting codes in the CMD prompt, and more. The stuff we tried got more and more complicated, and I was digging into parts of my computer system I didn't even know existed. By midnight, we still had nothing, and it was time to call it quits.
This morning, I did the thing every computer user dreads: I called AT&T's tech support.
Here I discovered that if you tell the AI that answers AT&T's support line you're having an Internet connection problem, the AI runs a quick diagnostic and says, "We're finding no problems on your line. Good-bye!" Then it hangs up on you. I finally got through to a human being by just repeating, "I need help" every time the AI asked me what was wrong. The human in question, a very nice young man named Sebastian, listened to the details of my problem, clicked around on his keyboard . . . and told me there was nothing wrong with my WiFi, and have a nice day.
Okay, then.
Darwin said it was probably time to try a factory reset. There was a code or a system that needed a complete reboot, and a factory reset was the only way to find it. I was coming to the reluctant conclusion that he was right. Problem was, we didn't know for sure that a factory reset would solve the problem, but a factory reset would definitely wipe all my programs, and I would spend at least a day reloading all of them before my computer would be usable again, a process I wasn't eager to endure.
And then I remembered something. Back in the Old Days, when WiFi was a new thing, computers didn't come with an onboard WiFi receiver. You had to buy one separately and plug it into your tower. Maybe the problem was with my computer's WiFi receiver. If it were, a new one would probably solve the problem.
I drove down to Best Buy and snagged a plug-and-play adapter/receiver. Back home, I downloaded its driver with my cell phone as modem, plugged the adapter into my computer, and held my breath. The adapter instantly found Trollboy and asked if I wanted to connect to him. I said that I did, thank you very much, and here's the password. POOF! I had full-blown Internet.
And it doesn't disconnect and it's fast.
Man.