Gateway Parts

My wifi connection only connects locally and not to net, should I get an external card?

I have a newer cheap gateway laptop and am having trouble connecting wifi spots, either choppy service or just connects locally with out going to the Internet. It's frustrating because at school everyone in a room can be online and I am without connection, I can't figure out how to get it to connect online and not just locally. Having said this my connection does work in places and some places no, I think my internal card is cheap and weak. Is that possible? I'm thinking of adding an external pcmci card to boost the signal, will this help? Does anyone recommend a card? Thanks

Public Comments

1. It sounds like you have some wrong settings. Go to a place with free wifi and hard lines. Try to connect to their wifi and there hard line and see what happens. If you can connect with the hard line and not the wifi, then your software (driver) might have gotten locked up some how. The best way that I have found to fix this is to install the latest driver from the manf. website. If they don’t have a new one then you can reinstall the existing one. I assume you are using windows. To do it you need to get to the device manager and scroll down to the network dropdown menu. Right click the wifi network card and uninstall it. Next at the top of the window there should be a “search for new hardware” button. Press it and the computer should locate the wifi card and reinstall the driver. If that doesn’t work, you might have to call gateway for some kind of replacement.