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Limited Wi-Fi Internet connectivity

While using my preview build of windows 10, sometimes I face the dreaded "Limited Wi-Fi Internet" connectivity issues, where the Wi-Fi adapter seems to be connected to the Wi-Fi router, but full Internet access is not possible. I often attributed these issues to quirks in the preview builds, and a simple computer restart--reminiscent of the older Windows releases--seemed to fix the issue.


But not yesterday, where multiple restarts did not ease the pain. Even deleting the Wi-Fi network and recreating it again did not help. The dreaded "Limited Wi-Fi" banner under the Wi-Fi network name continued to rear its ugly head.


Luckily I had an Ethernet cable handy, so I hard wired the laptop and checked online to see if others have faced a similar issue. There was a considerable number of people experiencing the issue, with various solutions. The one that made sense for me was a bad wireless driver install, which was easy to fix. Before you attempt to replicate the solution, make sure you are connected to the Internet via an Ethernet cable since you'd need to download the latest drivers from the Internet.


First I deleted the Wi-Fi network definition, and did not create a new one. Then I went to the device manager--Win Key+X, selected the Device Manager, and selected the wireless adapter. For my computer, that was the Intel Dual Band wireless adapter.


I right-clicked on the adapter, and selected uninstall, and in the dialog boxes choose to remove the driver from the computer. This gave me a clean slate to reinstall the driver from the Internet.


After the uninstall was successful, from the Device Manager Action Menu, I selected scan for new hardware, which popped up the Intel Dual Band wireless adapter again. I then right-clicked on the adapter, and selected update the driver, and selected update from the Internet. After the download was complete, I recreated my Wi-Fi network, and things worked again like a charm.


I am not sure why the wireless driver got corrupt in the first place, but it is good to know that the "Limited Wi-Fi Internet Connectivity" issue can be easily fixed.

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