In this article, we will take a closer look at the process of connecting a laptop or Windows 7 computer to the Internet via Wi-Fi. I think the article will be useful to many, since when you first connect to Wi-Fi, there are always a lot of questions. As a rule, they are associated with installing the necessary drivers, enabling a wireless adapter on a laptop, etc. More on that later.
The laptop is a great thing. I do not really understand people who are now buying stationary computers. Except for serious games. Well, you must admit, with a laptop it is much more convenient. If you want a big screen, you can connect it to a monitor or TV. It does not make noise, and if necessary, you can take it with you. And yet, all modern (and not so) laptops have a built-in Wi-Fi module. A receiver that allows you to connect your laptop to the Internet via a wireless Wi-Fi network. In the case of a desktop computer, you will need to buy .
All you need is to buy and install (if you don't already have it), it will distribute Wi-Fi to which you connect your laptop. You can connect your computer to a free Wi-Fi network in cafes, shops, etc. Or, to your neighbor's unsecured network 🙂 This is much more convenient than laying a network cable. If for a regular desktop computer this is still normal, then for a laptop this is no longer the case. And it’s not convenient to move around the house all the time with this wire.
Connecting a laptop to the Internet is not difficult, but provided that the driver for Wi-Fi is installed. Many people have a lot of problems because of the driver. If you simply did not install the driver on your Wi-Fi receiver, or you installed Windows yourself and did not install it, then you will not be able to connect to Wi-Fi. But, perhaps, you already have everything installed and configured, therefore, first we will consider the process of a normal connection to a wireless network. If you can’t learn from it, there won’t be a wireless connection, etc., then read the article to the end, we will consider possible problems.
Connect laptop to Wi-Fi
Let's first consider the connection process without any settings and checks there. Why complicate things, maybe you already have everything set up. If everything is fine, your laptop sees the wireless network and is ready to connect, then the Internet connection icon on the notification bar will look like this:
Connection status that looks like network level with an asterisk (as in the picture above) indicates that the laptop sees available networks and is ready to connect to them. Click on this icon, then select the Wi-Fi network to which we need to connect and click the button Connection. In Windows 10, the Wi-Fi connection process is slightly different. If necessary, detailed instructions.
If the network is password protected, a window will appear in which you need to specify the password and confirm the connection by clicking the button Ok.
That's it, your laptop should connect to the Wi-Fi network. The connection status will be like this:
You can use the internet.
If you see connection status, it looks like this:
This means that most likely everything is configured on your laptop, but the laptop simply does not see networks available for connection. Perhaps there is simply no coverage in this place. If you are connecting to your network, then check if the router is turned on. If enabled, then .
This is how the connection will go when you have the driver installed on the Wi-Fi adapter and the adapter itself is turned on. But very often the adapter on the laptop is turned off, or no one installed the driver on it at all. In such cases, many questions arise. Now we will analyze in detail both cases, due to which you may have problems connecting your laptop to a wireless network.
Enable "Wireless Network Connection" on the laptop
If your wireless connection is disabled, or the driver for Wi-Fi is not installed, then the connection status will look like this:
This means that there is no way to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi, and there is no connection via a network cable. As I wrote above, this happens due to the adapter being turned off, or due to the lack of a driver. Let's first check if you have "Wireless Network Connection" disabled. This, of course, is unlikely, unless you turned it off yourself, but you need to check.
Click on the internet connection icon, and select Network and Sharing Center.
Then choose Change adapter settings.
Look at the adapter "Wireless Network Connection", if it is disabled, then right-click on it and select Turn on.
After that, the connection status "There are available connections" should appear. (if there is a Wi-Fi network in the radius).
We turn on wireless connections with the buttons on the laptop
It seems to me that now manufacturers do not install separate buttons to turn on the Wi-Fi adapter. But, if you have problems connecting to Wi-Fi, then charmingly check if there is a special button to disable / enable wireless connections on your laptop. I know for sure that Toshiba liked to make such switches.
Now, on laptops, a keyboard shortcut is used to disable / enable the wireless network. As a rule, different manufacturers have different keys. But usually this Fn+F2. So on Asus laptops. You can see for yourself, there should be a network icon on the key that is pressed in tandem with Fn. Approximately like this:
True, my combination of these buttons is responsible for turning off Bluetooth. Wi-Fi does not seem to respond at all. But, yours may be different. It's definitely worth checking out.
If there is no "Wireless Network Connection" adapter at all in the adapter management window, but there is Wi-Fi on your computer / laptop for sure, then this means that Wi-Fi adapter driver not installed.
Now we will check everything and try to solve this problem.
Check and install the driver on Wi-Fi
I have not yet seen a case that after installing Windows 7, the system itself installed the driver on the Wi-Fi adapter. In Windows 8, this is much better. Windows 10 often installs the necessary drivers itself. So, after installing Windows, in order to use Wi-Fi, you need to install the driver specifically for your laptop or adapter (very often, adapters from different manufacturers are installed in one laptop model. It is because of this that you can see several Wi-Fi drivers on the manufacturer's website).
We go to the device manager.
Open the tab in Device Manager Network adapters, and looking for a driver for Wi-Fi. I have it called Atheros AR9485WB-EG Wireless Network Adapter, it is installed. You must also have something like Wireless Network Adapter.
If you do not have a wireless connection, then most likely you will not find an adapter either. You need to install the driver, then Wi-Fi will work. And yet, if the driver on the Wireless Network Adapter is not installed, then there will be at least one unknown device with a yellow exclamation mark in the device manager. It looks something like this:
This is most likely the same Wireless adapter that the laptop does not know how to work with.
Driver installation
All you have to do is download the right driver and install it. It is best to download the driver from the official website of your laptop / adapter manufacturer, and for your laptop (or adapter) model. Best of all, use Google to find the official website of your laptop, for example Asus, then use the site search on the site, indicating the model of your laptop. Most likely, your computer page will be found, open it and find utility and driver downloads there. Find the driver for Wireless and download it for the operating system you need.
Most likely, the driver will be in the archive. To install, run the .exe file from the archive. For example, the archive with the driver for my laptop:
After installing the driver, restart the laptop and try connecting to the wireless network, following the instructions. I wrote in more detail about installing the driver in an article about.
If some points from the article remained incomprehensible to you, or you still couldn’t connect your computer to Wi-Fi, then write about it in the comments, we will try to solve your problem.
After installing a Wi-Fi router, many people have a question, how can I now connect a regular desktop computer that does not have Wi-Fi to the Internet. Previously, the Internet was connected to the computer via cable, but now what to do? I do not really want to lay a network cable from the router to the computer. After all, we installed a router in order to get rid of the wires in the house.
Yes, after installing a router and setting up a Wi-Fi network at home or in the office, all laptops, tablets, phones and a number of other devices will be able to connect to the Wi-Fi network "over the air". These devices have a built-in Wi-Fi receiver. And if you still have a stationary computer to which you also need to connect the Internet, then there are only two options:
- Lay a network cable from the router to the desktop computer. But, this option is not often suitable, because you don’t always want to fiddle with cables, and sometimes it’s simply not possible to run this cable to a PC.
- Well, the second option, which we will talk about in this article, is connecting an external or internal Wi-Fi adapter to your computer. With it, a regular, stationary computer will be able to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi.
I faced exactly the same situation at home. After installing the router, all devices connected wirelessly. But I connected the computer that I had to leave via Wi-Fi using a USB Wi-Fi receiver. It is about these receivers that I will now tell in more detail.
Connecting a computer to Wi-Fi using an adapter. Without cable
As I wrote above, for ordinary computers that do not have built-in wireless network receivers, there are a large number of network adapters on sale. These adapters are both external and internal. As for the prices, they are not very expensive. Of course, there are different models, from different manufacturers. But, the cheapest one will cost you about 6-7 dollars (these are devices of popular manufacturers). Tenda has inexpensive models. For example, I also have an inexpensive, external USB Wi-Fi adapter TP-LINK TL-WN721N. It looks like this:
Works great. You will need to prepare instructions for setting it up on a PC. By the way, many people call such adapters "flash drives for connecting to Wi-Fi" :)
How to choose a Wi-Fi adapter for a computer: external and internal
Let's see what these adapters are, and how to choose such an adapter for your PC. So, they are external and internal.
External adapters
Connect to the USB port of the computer. To install it, you do not need to open the system unit, this is undoubtedly a plus. They look like ordinary flash drives. There are small ones, there are ones like in the picture above, and there are also antennas. I advise you to buy those with antennas if the Wi-Fi network signal is not very strong in the room where you have a computer.
If you are not very computer savvy, then I recommend buying an external Wi-Fi receiver. Almost anyone will do. The installation is not false: we connected the adapter to the USB connector of the computer, installed the drivers, and that's it, you can.
Here is another photo of external adapters:
Internal adapters
These adapters plug into the PCI (or PCI Express) slot on your computer's motherboard. It is clear that to install such an adapter, you need to disassemble the system unit. Installation is also not difficult at all. They removed the cover from the system unit, installed the adapter in the PCI slot, rebooted the computer, installed the driver and that's it.
Outside the system unit, the adapter antenna will peek out, or even several. This is all for the best reception. After all, if a regular USB receiver can be connected via an extension cable so that it would receive a signal better, then this will not work with an internal adapter.
Here's what the internal PCI adapters look like:
What is the best adapter to buy to connect a regular computer to Wi-Fi? Yes, basically, what's the difference. But, for some reason it seems to me that external USB adapters are more convenient and practical. They can be easily connected to another computer. The connection and installation process is a little easier.
As you can see, connecting a desktop computer to a Wi-Fi network is not at all difficult. But, you can get rid of the wires. This is especially true if the router is far from the computer.
Today, you can use wireless Internet from completely different devices. It can be not only a laptop and a computer, but also a phone, tablet and even a TV. But these devices must support WIFI technology. Virtually all modern laptops have Wi-Fi. This also applies to smartphones and tablets. And on computers, a wireless connection can be created by purchasing a special adapter.
I will tell you about this and much more right now.
So, after we have turned on WI-FI, you can already try to connect to it. Let's start with a laptop.
1. Connecting to WI-FI on a laptop
Every modern laptop has WI-FI. It is enough to turn it on, then find our wireless network and connect to it. Let's take care of this.
We open:
Start - Control Panel - Network and Internet - Network and Sharing Center - Change adapter settings.
Here we see the icon Wireless network connection. Right click on it and select Turn on.
At the bottom of the screen (where the clock is) a window will appear with the found wireless networks. We find our WI-FI and connect to it.
Confirm by entering a password.
Now we can open any other browser and try to download sites.
2. Connect to WI-FI on the computer
With desktop computers, it's a little more difficult. They most often do not have wireless technology. But this problem is easily solved by purchasing a special board, or a small adapter.
This is what I had on my old computer:
By inserting it into a standard USB port, WI-FI appears on the computer.
On my new PC I have Network adapter as a fee:
The price is almost the same ($10), but the signal is better, which has a positive effect on the speed of the Internet.
After installing any of these adapters and installing drivers for it (the disk is included), exactly the same connection to WI-FI, as in the laptop example. We act by analogy with a laptop.
3. Connect to Wi-Fi on your phone and tablet
On the phone, just go to the settings, enable WI-FI and find your network. Here is an example from iPhone:
On other phones, everything is similar, including on Android smartphones. It's the same on tablets :)
4. Connection on other devices
On other devices, for example, TVs that support WI-FI or even printers, everything is done the same way: it turns on, the network is found and the connection is made.
I hope you managed to connect to WI-FI.
Turn on the search for Wi-Fi networks on your gadgets, laptops and computers - and you will see how popular wireless access technologies are and how tightly they penetrated into apartments and offices. The range of some routers is sometimes amazing: when searching for networks, you can easily find a network even, for example, on the other side of the street and connect to it. And dual-band routers allow you to avoid collisions and release the air using a higher frequency.
As a rule, laptops, smartphones, TVs and gaming gadgets require an Internet connection. Fundamental differences in connection method have operating systems Windows, Android and iOS. Let's consider them in order.
We connect a laptop and a computer to our router via Wi-Fi
To connect to wifi, you need at least to know the password (the data encryption key in case of network and traffic encryption). Consider connecting a laptop or desktop computer to an already configured and functioning router remotely.
Our goal is to connect to the Internet and to the local network.
We check that:
- The router is connected correctly to the provider and distributes the Internet.
- The Wi-Fi adapter is installed, it functions correctly, the drivers are installed and fresh.
Connecting via WPS
The easiest, no knowledge-requiring way to connect to a router is through WPS. It can be hardware (using a hardware button) or software (using a pin code).
The button is pressed once and not for long (a second press is enough) both on the router and on the WI FI adapter.
After one or two minutes, the router and adapter themselves “negotiate” among themselves about the addresses and encryption password, and the Internet becomes available on the device.
Sometimes a device may not have a WPS button, but still support it. In this case, the WPS PIN is indicated on the label: when setting up a wireless network, the OS will ask you to enter it.
Despite the seeming simplicity of connection, it is deceptive: when activating a Wi-Fi connection using WPS, three procedures are involved:
- generating a key (password);
- generated password encryption
- imposing additional encryption on the channel using a certificate.
Due to the incomplete transparency of this procedure - you do not know the password and connection parameters - it is recommended to use the standard connection option with entering the key.
If the router was not initially configured, then by entering the WPS PIN, you can configure all the network parameters as you wish: its name and key.
Standard option for connecting laptops and computers to a router
Consider how to connect to wireless Internet through a pre-configured router.
All modern laptops are equipped with a Wi-Fi module. But a stationary computer should be equipped with a Wi-Fi adapter.
Pay attention to:
(1): All available wifi networks are visible here. We select our network (2), click (3) Connection to connect to the modem and, accordingly, the Internet.
A window appears asking you to enter a password (security key); and if the key is entered correctly, the icon for a successful Internet connection will appear:
Your computer can successfully use the resources of the local home network and access the Internet through your router.
Connecting smartphones and gadgets to the router
For smartphones and mobile gadgets, connecting to the Internet through a router is an opportunity to save on traffic and, accordingly, money when paying for services to the operator. A 4G network requires more resources and battery power than wireless access, so a smartphone will “live” longer with the Internet from a router without a GSM service provider. Any smartphone equipped with a Wi-Fi module can connect to your router's Wi-Fi.
Consider how to connect when the Internet is configured and distributed by an access point.
Android OS
We will demonstrate step by step how to connect the Internet through a router using the example of a smartphone with Android OS.
- In the settings of your smartphone, turn on the Wi-Fi module, available networks will be automatically scanned.
- Select your network from the list.
- Enter the network key (which was entered at the router setup stage).
- Upon successful connection, the corresponding signature "Connected" will appear.
If you cannot connect to a network device, restart both the device and your smartphone. Check the settings of your Internet sharing device and try to connect to the wireless network again as described above.
iOS OS
Let's take a step-by-step look at how to connect gadgets with the iOS operating system to the router.
In the "Settings" you should select the "General" section, where you can check the inclusion of the wireless module: when you move the slider to "ON", it automatically searches for networks available for connection. Select your network and enter the password (network key).
If the key is correct, the iPad and iPhone will successfully connect to the Internet.
Connecting to an unknown network device
Above, we discussed how to connect to a home access point, the parameters of which are known. However, there are situations that require connecting to someone else's equipment remotely, without data about the key and connection parameters.
Consider how to connect via Wi-Fi to the router in this case.
Password guessing
Users of home networks, due to inexperience, a small amount of knowledge and laziness, rarely make complex keys. Therefore, the question of how to connect to a wireless network is not difficult to solve: there are a number of dictionary key selection programs. For example, WiFirack.
This program also solves the problem of how to connect to a hidden network that does not broadcast. It is enough to scan the air, check the boxes of those networks to which you are interested in connecting, download the dictionary (you can also use the built-in one) and start the selection.
As a result, a Good.txt file will be created containing the names of the networks and their keys that we managed to pick up.
Password interception and cracking
Programs for capturing and decrypting wireless network packets are also available via the Internet. The essence of the method: even in the absence of correct authentication, the network device exchanges packets with the connected gadget that contain the key in encrypted form. The selection of such a package and their decryption is the way to open the key.
This is a class of programs for advanced users with knowledge in the field of computer security.
One example of this class of software is Airslax.
Works with decryption of WPA/WPA2 traffic and WEP encryption. Below the numbers are:
- Scanning the air, finding all networks, their signal levels, encryption options and other features.
- Decryption target selection. The ranking of networks in the list is in ascending order of their signal strength.
- The process of intercepting the selected network.
- Disconnecting the client from the point to initiate a re-authentication process: the first 4 packets contain the key in encrypted form.
- Password guessing for a captured WPA/WPA2 encrypted headshake using a dictionary.
- Saving results.
- Automatic WEP key guessing: a large number of DATA packets are collected, and authentication is tried every 5000 DATA packets collected.
- Points with the possibility of authorization via WPS are scanned here.
- Using Reaver or Bully, a pin code is selected.
- Automatic mode of operation.
Security of own network equipment
Having briefly considered the main methods of standard and unauthorized connection, we recall the basic basic requirements for our own equipment.
- Change default usernames and their passwords on the router. Many neglect or forget to perform this simple procedure, leaving a loophole for intruders.
- Enable encryption as hard as possible to decrypt - WPA2. It will significantly complicate and increase the time of hacking; attackers will prefer a simpler network to connect to.
- Restrict access by mac address. Although it is not difficult to change the address of a network card, the restriction on the poppy address is a necessary procedure for protecting the internal security loop.
- Change the Wi-Fi access key at least once every six months. Even if attackers do connect to your network equipment, connecting regularly and repeating the hacking procedure will force them to find a more accessible victim. This will not protect you from unauthorized connections, but will greatly reduce the likelihood of hacking. Safe and fast connections to you!
