You’re working away in a café and you need to look something up on the web. Everything is going fine but when you hit submit you lose connection and get that dreaded “network cannot be found” message. GRRRRRR..
Yep, it happens to me too. This is not necessarily a Surface problem because it can happen on any device but I thought you might be interested in learning how to fix it; in case it does happen on your Surface tablet – it did to me.
In this post I will cover the following:
- How to quickly reconnect to a wireless network (1)
- How to forget an old wireless network (2)
In the scenario described above, it is likely that your Surface will simply reconnect itself to the preferred network. However, if it doesn’t, do the following:
- Swipe from the right to bring up the Charms menu
- Select Settings
- Select the wireless network list
- From the list select the network you want to reconnect to and click Connect; be sure to select “Connect automatically”
Sometimes, the above doesn’t work because your device tries to reconnect to an old network. In this case, you need to stop it from looking at that old network by following these steps:
- Repeat Steps 1 – 3, as above
- Right-click or press and hold the network you want to forget
- When the menu comes up, choose “Forget this network”
- If needed, restart the Surface.
This should clear up your connection problems. Of course, if there is a network outage and you simply do not have any wireless networks available, this won’t fix it (you may want to try a free Windows Store App called Boingo Wi-Finder to locate a wireless network instead). It is also possible that you need to do step (1) and (2), if you’re having problems with your preferred wireless network; in this case, chose “Forget this network” on your preferred connection. It’s OK, after following the steps and a restart of your Surface tablet, the available networks will come back and you can choose the one you want again.
Joanna-
