Hello,

Problem with WIFI connecting to most internet sites.

I bought a new Acer Aspire 3680-2682 in Los Angeles 5 months ago, in LA and as far South as Guatemala wifi worked perfectly.

3 months ago in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and now in Argentina wifi will only connect to major internet sites, this means most local internet sites in those countries do not work and most smaller internet sites do not work ex. craigslist.org does not work, however these sites do work from the internet cafe across the road from the hostel I am staying at.

I have installed the latest FOXFIRE AND INET EXPLORER and they both do the same thing, they will not connect to most sites. Hotmail works fine, Google works fine and so most of the MASSIVE websites work fine also.

The laptop is using 802.11b/g wireless lan.

I have also removed the standard Nortons Anti Virus and installed AVG free edition. I have tried with windows firewall turned on and off and still same result.

Can anyone help me with this problem please?

Thanks,

Adrian
australian currently in argentina.

When you are at the Internet cafe which you speak of, are you connecting to the Internet via your laptop or one of their machines?

Hi Myke,

I have exactly the same problem connecting to wifi at internet cafes on my laptop as I do at any other wifi network.

Extra Info:
The inbuilt Vista Diagnostics says that my computer:
¨Cannot Commincate with Primary DNS Server 216.230.128.38¨

Also, Just updated the wireless network driver today, still same probs.

Thanks Mike, hope this assists you in helping me¨.

Cheers,

Adrian

In the above quote in bold, you stated that these sites do indeed work at the internet cafe. I'm a bit confused by that.

If they do not work, then you should ask the tech. at the cafe what the deal is. There might be restrictions as to what you can view, but I'm not entirely sure about that. Worst case scenario, you can rule out content censorship.

You also stated that the WiFi worked fine as far south as Guatemala but not any further south of Costa Rica. I'm wondering if there is any sort of hardware compatibility issue, seeing as at that point you are about to cross over into South America. They might be using a different band of 802.11.

With all the traveling you do, do you know if you have this problem on any other continent? I know it sounds wierd asking this, but it's all that is coming to my head at the moment.

Hi Myke,

Sorry about any confusion, when I mentioned that these websites work from internet cafes I meant from their computers not my laptop.

Just moved furhter south in Argentina to Bariloche and staying at a small hotel that has internet computers but no wifi, they said I could unplug the network cable from one of their destop internet computers and plug that into my laptop and this works totally fine, so the problem is wifi specific (and anything which may specifically interfere with wifi such as firewalls).

Are there any settings I should be aware of on my laptop in windows vista that should be turned on or off (I am not an expert and am regretting selling my 3 yr old xp-laptop for a vista laptop).

Mike thanks very much for your help so far, any magic you can create with my laptop will be very much appreciated.

Cheers,

Adrian

So, the final problem is caused by the network connecting, not by the system configuration, right?