When Microsoft launched Windows 11 about two years ago, one of the objectives it set was to resolve some of the shortcomings that had been revealed in the previous version. And although it generally succeeded, some drawbacks have persisted. One of them is the one we are going to see in this post: Windows 11 and its problems connecting to WiFi.
In reality, there are many reasons and factors that come into play to determine with certainty why it is not possible to connect a PC with Windows 11 to the Internet. To be successful in this enterprise, the best thing to do is to approach the issue methodically, discarding the most common errors and trying the solutions that we present below following the order that we set:
Preliminary checks
Before getting into more complex solutions, common sense tells us to perform a series of Basic checks to rule out the most obvious problems. It may seem silly, but it is surprising how many times these simple checks help us with Windows 11 and its problems connecting to WiFi.
The first thing to do is check that it is possible to connect from another PC or any other device. If so, we will know that it is not a connection failure, but rather a computer problem. You must verify that the airplane mode Or that pc wifi adapter is not disabled.
Likewise, you have to make sure that the router's WiFi connection is available before going crazy looking for the origin of the problem.
Restart the PC
In theory, everything is in place and working, but there is no way for our Windows 11 PC to connect to the internet. The first solution to try is the classic method of "Turn on and turn off". In our case, restart the computer.
A simple and somewhat crude remedy, but it works. In a high percentage of cases, that is enough to settle the issue.
Reset network settings
Has restarting the PC been of no use? Okay, so let's go with more elaborate solutions. The first one we should try is this: reset the network settings on our PC. By doing this, we will remove all your network adapters and reset your network settings to default. This is how you do it:
- To start, we use the key combination Windows + I to access the screen Configuration.
- There we click on the tab Network and Internet.
- On the same screen, in the section Advanced network settings, we click on the button Network Restoration (see in the image above).
- Finally, we wait for the process to finish and restart our PC so that the changes are applied.
Update WiFi drivers
WiFi drivers in Windows are those in charge of connecting our PC to the Internet. If we have automatic updates disabled, it is quite likely that these drivers will become obsolete. Therefore, a possible solution for Windows 11 and its problems connecting to the WiFi network is to update them. This is what we should do:
- First we click on the taskbar search icon, where we write "Device manager". We click on the first result that appears.
- Then we expand the Network Adapters folder, right click on the WiFi driver and select the option "Update driver".
In some cases this solution may fail. Then we will have no choice but uninstall the driver and install a new one. The first action can be easily executed from step 2 mentioned above (by selecting the “Uninstall” option). Once this is done, all you have to do is restart the PC and the operating system itself will search among the drivers it has stored and install a new one.
Flush DNS
Another solution for this type of connection problems is clean and renew DNS, that is, the domain name system of our PC. It is a useful method when our PC is connected to the network, but we cannot browse the Internet or open any web page. To perform this action you must do the following:
- We right click on the menu Home and in it we select "Windows Terminal (Administrator)".
- Next, you have to execute the following commands, one by one:
- netsh winsock reboot
- netsh int ip reset
- ipconfig/release
- ipconfig / renew
- ipconfig / flushdns
- To finish, we restart the PC.
Last method: Update Windows 11
When all else has failed, we still have one solution in store: upgrading the PC. Sometimes, those WiFi connection problems in Windows 11 that drive us crazy only occur in the particular version of Windows that we have installed on our computer. Therefore, a quite logical solution is to try to search for new updates by visiting the section Windows Update within the Windows 11 Settings menu. One last bullet to solve the problem.