this is pathetic, you would think there would be a fix to this problem. I have spent 3 days going over message boards and help lines about this problem and no one really knows the answer. I just found this site and although I have tried all that is listed here it is great to see all the potential answers in one posting. That being said I still can’t figure this out. I have an Acer 6920 with an Intel 4965agn wireless adapter built in. running vista home premium. in addition to the suggestions here I have installed every different version of the driver I could find and no luck I have tried a complete restore and even installing vista ultimate 32 bit to see if it was just a 64 bit issue - note it is slightly more stable with the 32 bit os but still will not last I have again restored it to the 64 bit vista home. some times I can get it working for a few minutes then it quits. and sometimes I get local assess only, sometimes (most of the time) vista "disables" the adapter and it will not enable without uninstalling and reinstalling and other times it just completely disappears. and I have to reboot several times to get it visible again. I would send the ipconfig but that really will not help since sometimes it says there is no adapter installed and other times it is there. and before you say it is the adapter I have pulled it out and put it in Acer 5620 running xp and it works there. I know this is a long post but this is driving me crazy Intel or Microsoft or somebody need to get this together. if this was my computer I would have through it away by now. I really would appreciate any and all ideas or if you know an internal adapter that I get that will not have these issues let me know and I will go that way. I have dealt with a lot a facers with this same adapter and have not seen this issue before but from what I have read it is very common. If I find anything that works for more than a couple of hours I will be sure to past it here
thanks
Please help
Steve
www.Computersandmore-tx.com

I have recently resolved this issue on my laptop and I thought it was my duty to come on here and register to post my solution. I am running Vista-64 with an intel wifi link 5100 wireless adapter and I have a 2wire modem/router combo. I have tried everything from re-installing vista, updating drivers (including wireless adapter, windows SP and others related to my system), I tried the static IP and DNS entry solution seen accross these forums, disabling IPv6... none of this worked for me. What resolved my issue was to change the Wireless Channel on my 2wire modem/router. I suspect what happened was that vista was picking up several wireless connections (from my neighbours) and they were all set at the default wireless channel (6 was the default). I changed mine to 1 and I haven't had that painfull issue since!!

In short, try checking the wireless channel config in your wireless router. Change it to something else.... I also have IPv6 disabled but I'm not sure if it is helping this issue - I haven't tried it and frankly don't care! My connection remains up!!! WOOHOO

As of thursday, my laptop (vista) only shows Access: Local Only. It connects to the airport extreme but wont get to Local and Internet.
My other laptops (xp) can still connect to the internet but my xbox 360 cant.

Any help? Ive been trying to fix it all weekend! :(

I have recently resolved this issue on my laptop and I thought it was my duty to come on here and register to post my solution. I am running Vista-64 with an intel wifi link 5100 wireless adapter and I have a 2wire modem/router combo. I have tried everything from re-installing vista, updating drivers (including wireless adapter, windows SP and others related to my system), I tried the static IP and DNS entry solution seen accross these forums, disabling IPv6... none of this worked for me. What resolved my issue was to change the Wireless Channel on my 2wire modem/router. I suspect what happened was that vista was picking up several wireless connections (from my neighbours) and they were all set at the default wireless channel (6 was the default). I changed mine to 1 and I haven't had that painfull issue since!!

In short, try checking the wireless channel config in your wireless router. Change it to something else.... I also have IPv6 disabled but I'm not sure if it is helping this issue - I haven't tried it and frankly don't care! My connection remains up!!! WOOHOO

How do you change the wireless channel?

How do you change the wireless channel?

You need to login into your router with your browser: typically the ip address is 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1, in IE just type http://192.168.x.x

Find your wireless router config pages, and in there look for Wireless channel settings.

Hope this helps, but all routers are different and the config pages are different.

whenever i type those two numbers it always fails to load the page... its on a mac btw, does that have anything to do with it

Not to familiar with Mac's, sorry. You will need to find out what the IP address of your router is for you to login and verify the configs.

Good luck!

I had the same problem. I went to the device manager and opened the wireless card and saw that vista will turn off the wireless card to save power. Change the setting and it seems to be ok.

Hey Guys,

Felt compelled to register and make a post after using the advice herein to solve my problem.

I did all the suggestions listed: the netsh command, deleting/reconnecting to listed networks, disabling IPv6, etc. Oddly, when I went to plug in manual settings for my router, the damned thing had been set to manual without my knowing it, swapped from automatically acquiring an IP address/DNS Server address to expecting me to provide one.

Seems like an amateur problem/solution, but god only knows how it got changed to begin with. I'm going to go ahead and blame windows update, since windows update fubarred my last laptop's ability to connect to the internet, too.

So, what worked in the end for me:
1. Open network and sharing centre
2. Manage network connections
3. Open wireless connection properties
4. Highlight TCP/IPv4, click properties
5. Check to see if it has decided to wait for you to fill in the information for it, seemingly at random.

Best,

Witt.

After having this happend 3 different times and not being able to resolve it short of a complete reinstall. It occured to me that the onboard NICs maintain state even when the power is off on the PC (during a reboot, even during shutdown time)... The NICs on the 680i were effectively stuck in a sleep like mode. So, here it is, after days of research and screwing around with 10 or 20 other recommendations.

UNPLUG THE MACHINE.

plug it back in, and done.. it's working again. No IPv6, no DHCP flags, no Enable/disable.... that's it... just cut the power to the pc for 10 sec or so and viola!!!

I have had this same problem also. I have been reviewing suggestions here, as well as from friends and other sources, but nothing has worked. No internet connections work while running windows, either wired or wireless, but I know the hardware is fine because I am running this from the same laptop using a linux live CD. I have:
-Gone through all of window's usual diagnostic b.s.
-Disabled IPv6 for both wired and wireless connections.
-Checked to make sure it was set to automatically acquire IP settings
-Edited registry and changed DCHP flags
-Changed power management setting so wireless/network cards cannot be turned off to save power.

All of these changes did not work, and some of them should definitely not be necessary. The location does not matter, and I have tried many different wired and wireless connections, sometimes with only 1 network available (so there should've been no conflict). Does anyone have any insight or alternative solutions? At this point I am really considering reinstalling windows, since I would like to go to a dual boot setup anyways...

Did you try my recommendation from the post above yours of unplugging the machine to reset the NICs? Seriously, not just power cycle it... disconnect the power for 10s or so..

I have had this same problem also. I have been reviewing suggestions here, as well as from friends and other sources, but nothing has worked. No internet connections work while running windows, either wired or wireless, but I know the hardware is fine because I am running this from the same laptop using a linux live CD. I have:
-Gone through all of window's usual diagnostic b.s.
-Disabled IPv6 for both wired and wireless connections.
-Checked to make sure it was set to automatically acquire IP settings
-Edited registry and changed DCHP flags
-Changed power management setting so wireless/network cards cannot be turned off to save power.

All of these changes did not work, and some of them should definitely not be necessary. The location does not matter, and I have tried many different wired and wireless connections, sometimes with only 1 network available (so there should've been no conflict). Does anyone have any insight or alternative solutions? At this point I am really considering reinstalling windows, since I would like to go to a dual boot setup anyways...

Was this for a desktop though? I guess I can take out the battery on my laptop...

Please post if the battery removal worked or not. I'm curious if this solution works for laptops also.

Nope, it didnt work with my laptop... I unplugged and took the battery out. Still says local access only. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I really need the internet to work, as I have projects to complete and am out of town for a week. Once the week is over I can go back and reinstall windows if necessary, but unfortunately that is not an option now...

I have seen this problem when installing another firewall like Mcafee or Norton. Sometimes McAffee has been known to block when it should not. If you have McAfee installed trying turning off the block function. If you have Norton you might try uninstalling it and re installing it.

Good day.

This worked for me(With Vista): Look for a "Vista hotfix for wireless" out there on the net. I had it on my support cd btw. Then in network and sharing center when network is unidentified and local only access, change it from public to private network. Then unconnect, and connect back on. Then I got full access. It worked for me so just wanted to share it.

Wow. Excellent community you folks have here. Just thought I'd share my own solution to this problem:

While none of the suggestions I've seen had worked, I was troubleshooting through the "network card is keeping old data" possibility when I decided to pull the card entirely out of the motherboard. Out of curiosity, I installed the card into a different IDE slot.

When I restarted, I could connect to wifi networks, but no internet at ALL (I was earlier getting short, intermittent connections, but now- nothing.)

When I investigated, it turned out that Vista thought the card (a DLink) was an older Aetherios card I had installed a long time ago. Apperently, Vista still had the old drivers under "show hidden devices" in Device Manager. I uninstalled the driver. Still didn't work, so I had Device Manager check for new devices. It found it, re-installed the DLink drivers, and voila! It works, now!

I'm going to keep an eye on it and report back if I have further troubles, but the problem seemed to be this:

Even though it was identifying the two cards by the IDE slot they were installed in, and even though the two cards were never installed at the same time: it seems that Vista was switching back and fourth between the two different configurations, one of which obviously would not work at any given moment.

The strange thing is that no matter what, I could always access my router and access points with their 192.168.*.* addresses. Weird.

Also, for general edification: even though the old Aetherios drivers were still installed, I had them disabled, so they SHOULDN'T have been interfering, in a perfect world. Just goes to show: if anything at all CAN go wrong, Vista knows how to make it happen. XD

But that said, I'm just glad I didn't have to wipe my machine. Too much time has been invested into getting this set-up working with all my programs.

Hope this helps someone. And good luck to those it doesn't help. Keep trying!

Today I was trying to get my local connection online(That is with network cable instead of wireless), just wanted to check out if i could remove some disturbance in a game I played. When i deactivated local connection and started up the wireless connection again, I had some problems getting online. I remember I did a adjustment in local network, a setting to make the network shared with other computers, so I switched that back off, and at the same time I did that, my wireless connection went back on at once suddenly! Very weird in my opinion, but seemed like It did the trick and for some reason did not like that I had that option ON in the local network.

I must say, Vista is really scary sometimes, because to me that was really really weird. Why would that have something to say to get the frikkin wireless connection online.

I had no luck makin the local connection work by the way.

Well well, next time I go for good old XP, unless windows 7 is having only but good feedback.

I did this for my problem. It says I'm connected to the internet thru the wireless connection, but browser doesn't display web page. I can ping site such as yahoo and google. What else can I do?

There seam to be two different and distinct problems floating around on the internet and even in this thread forum.

1) computer running vista cannot connect to internet through wireless access at all, gets the local only mesasge

2) computer running vista connects to wireless but intermittantly looses internet connection (becomes local only), especially after waking up from sleep mode.

Can you guys please specify which of the two you are trying to address.

In my case, I suffered from problem 2) for a long time, until I changed my router to DIR 655. In new router I copied over exact same settings as previous router and simply switched the routers. Obviously, the laptop did not even know the routers had changed so no config changes were needed in the laptop.

This magical fix worked flowlessly for over 6 months.

Two days ago , I fiddled with router setting (moved from g to n and changed to wpa2 from wpa) and instantly the laptop stopped connecting and I had to reconfigure the wifi settings of the laptop. The wireless connection started working but now it takes 3-4 minutes to switch to "local and internet" when laptop wakes from sleep mode. Also, intermittantly, the laptop switches into "local only" mode and self corrects after a few minutes.

I then changed my router settings back to what was working before, but now the problem is not going away. I keep ending up with "local only" connection every once in a while and everytime I open laptop from sleep mode.

I was having the second (2) problem. I updated two things and the problem went away. First, I updated my router frameware. Secondly, I updated the WiFi Wireless driver. I took the wireless driver from Linksys web site. I hope this helps.

It was right thing to do to reconfiger laptop.
Wirelass connection sometimes fail for no obvious reason, and then it would work for month withou problem and than again... this is because routers. I had constant problems, and what I did was to release my ip and/or restart router. You may even contact your ISP. They can check how your router communiters with their servers and if there seem something wrong. (they may unpgrade your router's firmware)
To release ip go to command prompt by pressing start menu end typing in "cmd" than typing command "ipconfig/release" and after that "ipconfig/renew".
To restart router simply unplug it from power source for a minute or so and replug it again.
I complete understands you "local only" solution. Another thing you may try is to disable your software firewall and see if problem still exists.

Another solution may be renewing your tpc/ip settings.
To do that open "cmd" and type in "netsh int ip reset". Reboot your computer and see if this helps.

Analyzed the problem in more detail, just wanted to share.

I set up a batch ping script to ping yahoo/google every 60 seconds and log faliure events with timestamp. I installed, the script onto 3 different computers in the house - 1 wired and 2 wireless.

All 3 computers have dropped ping packets, usually 2-3 times per hour.

Just wandering if it is reasonable for me to expect 24X7 ZERO ping packet loss. What is the norm? does everyone have intermittant ping packet loss.

By the way, the vista laptop had the maximum ping packet loss per hour but while investigating I rolled back the firmware of my DIR655 router to an earlier version and the vista laptop started behaving normally (same ping packet loss as other machines in same network)

What i will try next is a wired connection to vista laptop directly from the model (bypass router), this will tell me if it has anything to do with the router.

Disconnected router and plugged in laptop directly into DSL modem and ran script to ping google/yahoo every 60 seconds.

- Not a single dropped connection in more than 8 hours
- When laptop wakes from sleep, I am able to browse the internet within 2 seconds. (local and internet within 2 secs)

Connected DIR 655 router back and connected from router to laptop using wired LAN.

- 2 to 3 dropped connections per hour (local access only during drop)
- takes about a minute to start browsing internet after waking laptop from sleep (local access only)

Connected laptop using wireless connection

- 2 to 3 dropped connections per hour(local acces only during drop)
- laptop takes about a minute to start browsing the internet (local access only)

DNS ERROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have a very similar situation:

1 - I have narrowed it down to a DNS error. When status shows "local only" Msn messenger has told me that there was a DNS error. I have trouble shooted on my PS3 and it says the same thing. This means the problem isnt just with vista or my HP laptop since when my computer shows local only my ps3 also can not connect to the internet.

2- I have already tried in the command prompt as admin to do (config/flushdns) but it does not help

3 - the only way I can seem to temporarely solve this problem until it disconnects once again is by connecting to another wireless network in my area then connecting back to mine (this make take several tries) or rebooting everything from laptop to routers.

The funny thing status will go from local only and internet to just local only at rondom times. I have tried downloading new drivers and updates it just doesnt seem to go away.

It seems a lot of people have this problem yet I have looked a lot of places and have not found a solid answer...PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!!

Finally figured it out. The issue can be isolated to DIR655 router.

There is a bug with some firmware versions regarding DNS relay. To solve the problem, disable DNS relay and hard code the DNS address given by your ISP directly into the DIR655.

I have not had a single DNS error since then.

Another possiblity, just check of you have a separate router and separate wifi access point. In my case, I had both from dlink. It turns out that the default local ip address for dlink in 192.168.0.1 and both the router and access point shared this same ip. Although the access point in bridged mode does not need an ip address, it still gets confused when left at default.

I ended up changing local ip address of access point to some range outside the dhcp range of the router and that did the trick

I am having the same problem. I have a Dell laptop with Vista Home Premium. The wired connection works locally and to the Internet. The wireless only works locally. I have reset the router, tried disabling IP6, reset the IP. So far nothing has worked. Anyone solved this?

Well, I changed my ip4 config from static to dynamic, reset the router, reconnected to the network(typing in the new WEP Key it generated on the restart), and the wireless connection is connecting both locally and to the Internet.

SOLVED: I had the same issue with Vista on a new Sony Vaio laptop. I was getting Local only most of the time. I'm using a Linksys WRT54G router. Download the latest firmware, upgrade the router's firmware version, and all problems solved.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.