You’ve turned on your computer and tried to connect online only to receive an error message…
There are any number of reasons that could be the cause for the lost connection. Here are some troubleshooting tips to discover why the Internet is not working and how to fix the problem:
1) Restart your computer. A lot of times the connection will be reset simply by restarting your computer and trying to connect again. To do this, click the windows button and select restart as your option. Your computer will now close out of the programs that are open and restart. Once the system is back up, you can attempt to connect again by clicking on your browser’s icon.
2) Make sure you paid your bill. Sometimes the cause of the internet not working is simply that the provider has disconnected the account for lack of payment. You can call your provider to ensure that your account is up to date and that isn’t the reason for the disruption in service. If it is the reason, you can usually make a payment over the phone and have your service restored in a few minutes to a few hours time.
3) Reset your modem. Unplug your modem from the wall and the internet source and plug it back in or hit the reset button if it has one to reset the system. The location of the reset button varies according to which model of modem you have. If the reset button doesn’t work, you should then try unplugging and plugging it back in.
4) Call your provider to ensure there isn’t an area outage that is causing the problem. They will be able to tell you if there is an outage, and if there is, that could be the cause of not being able to connect online. Once the service is restored you will be able to connect again. Your provider should be able to give an estimated time frame of service restoration.
5) Check your internet settings to see if your modem is registering as being active. You do this by hitting the Windows button and then clicking on Network. It will show you all of your active connections. If it says that your network is disconnected, click on the icon to reconnect. If it says you are connected, yet you cannot pull up a web page try restarting your computer to see if that fixes the problem.
Sometimes it will appear that you are connected when you really aren’t because your recently visited web pages are stored in a cached mode on your computer. It will appear that you are online when you are really only viewing a picture of a previously visited web page.
In order to tell if you are connected or not you will need to open up a new browser window and go to a site such as www.google.com to see if you are online. If you aren’t you will get an error message. You can also try refreshing the cached page to see if a new version loads or not.