I was frustrated by something very weird right now.
I put my Windows laptop to sleep, then woke it up – and hell broke loose: the tray wireless network icon has a red cross pasted over it, and there is no internet connection. It doesn’t find any available networks. What the fuck is wrong? I pressed the hardware wireless switch on the laptop – all seems on. But the red cross is still there, and there is still no internet connection. There is a shit load of ideas on various forums without any specific solutions. The funny thing is I put the laptop to sleep dozens of times in the exactly same way, and everything was fine until now. I especially liked Microsoft response on the issue. It turns out that if you still have internet connection, the red cross is caused by a local VPN server. Microsoft solution? Ignore it they say. We’ll fix it they say. It’s been two years, and it is not fixed. I don’t have internet connection, so that obviously is not my case anyway. So, I guess I’ll have to figure out a solution myself. As always. Right-click the wireless network tray icon and select the lowest menu item. Network and Sharing center opens. Select Change adapter settings on the left just to make sure the adapters are present. After that open Network and Sharing center again and click on the large red cross where the internet connection should be. The system will prompt to troubleshoot problems and run a network diagnostics only to detect that the wireless adapters are turned off. Turn them on, a viola the internet connection is back. Finally! So probably something didn’t wake up with the rest of the system last time I put it out of sleep mode, like the Windows built-in wireless controls ran in conflict with the third party utility, provided by the laptop manufacturer. Or maybe I pressed the wireless off button just before hitting the sleep one, as those buttons are close on the keyboard and easy to mix up.