Reboot

There are times when you'd like to just reboot your day.

This morning, my wife had to get up at 5AM to dial into a technical teleconference. We knew that she would, so it wasn't a surprise. Unpleasant, as the daughteroid is away, so the image of a lazy morning was appealing, but, okay. It comes with the territory.

What doesn't come with the territory is her laptop being unable to connect to the home network. Just flat no connection. She looked at a couple of things, she changed some things. Nada. She woke me up and I looked at this, I looked at that. After a while, I said This is really weird -- your laptop is broadcasting, because this little wireless antenna symbol above the Function Keys is lit, but - And she stopped me. That's it! HP Laptops have this thing, thats not just an indicator, its also a switch, and if you bump it, you can accidentally turn it off! So she tapped it, and the orange indicator turned blue, and suddenly the router said that she was connected.

Now what kind of freakin' maniac makes a switch that can be accidentally turned off, thus removing the vital connection without which laptops are essentially dumb terminals? Let alone, turned off without giving any indication that it is off? At least on my daughter's Dell, which has the same kind of stupidity, the switch is obviously a switch - well, gee, I don't know, what does flipping this do? - but on the HP, even that clue was gone. The indicator light is lit, so it must be okay.

So now she was broadcasting, the router says Oh yes, I see it now, so all is okay, right? No. Because now it says 'Limited Or No Connectivity'. Huh? To the same network that I'm using on my laptop? What exactly is that supposed to mean? ...she changed some things... What? Well, you know, there's dozens of things it could be -- networks, like helicopters, look for a reason to fail catastrophically; its no coincidence that Network and Not Work sound so much alike. We're thinking physical connectivity, ie, router is on and broadcasting, laptop is on and broadcasting, works; logical connectivity, ie, getting past something that blocks it, like MAC filtering or firewall or encryption type or encryption key, doesn't. Shouldn't be that big a deal. We hope. Once she's done, we'll have to figure it out. And document it. Document the hell out of it. In the interim, she said the hell with this, ran a cable from the router to the laptop, and connected that way. Newfangled wireless hoo-hah....

Why there's no 'network diagnostic software' beats me. Resolution is always a series of obvious and not-so-obvious steps, why can't a piece of software do that? I know, its not quite that simple -- well, yes, you could fix it by turning off your firewall, but you likely don't want to do that unless it's urgent and you have no other alternative; yes, you could fix it by turning off encryption, but you likely don't... - but does such software exist? (Probably) Does anyone offer it? (Probably) Is it usable? (Only by the people who are true network hackers, and thus would likely disdain it unless they're in a hurry and nobody is looking).

Gah.

Reboot!

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Update: I've been reading posts on this and similar problems. Why do so many people feel it necessary to slime the intelligence of the people asking the question?Let alone, offer suggestions that require a level of knowledge that the question indicates the asker doesn't have? Or offer stray suggestions/dicta that have nothing to do with the question? (You shoulda got a Mac, they rool!) Reminds me of an article I read wherein a fellow said that when he had a Linux question, he learned never to just ask the question, because he'd get either no response or rude/crude/unhelpful ones. Instead, he'd say 'I wish I could use Linux, because I think it's better than Windoze, but, you know, Windoze can do this, and Linux can't..." He'd be inundated with Linux gurus telling him how to do it. Because, you know, Linux rools.