"Can't connect to this network"

[#1]

We've had FTTC connectivity for a few months and everything's been fine.

I have hard connection (for reasons), we have lots of other devices connected by WiFi.

This week (apparently like a lot of people) the line dropped multiple times, though it hasn't happened for a 24 hours, and this seems to have been the source of the problem, somehow...

The problem is this:

My wife's PC which was previously connected last weekend, but only switched on again this weekend, now can't connect.

My laptop is usually hardwired, but I had it unplugged this morning and it was fine streaming a Youtube video. But after my wife told me she couldn't connect, I disconnected mine from the router and when I tried to re-connect, I got the same error message.

"Can't connect to this network"

I tried forcing it to forget and re-inputting the password but that made no difference.

My son's PC and phone also disconnected during the week, but he said he just needed to forget and re-input the password.

My daughter has a Mac and hasn't reported any issues. My phone has not had any problems either. My wife's other laptop (work) also has had no issues.

I have tried resetting all my PC drivers and restarting, but there's no change.

Obviously I'm okay because I have the hard link. My wife is not desperate since she has her other machine.

BUT: How do we get these devices re-connected?

[#2]

Welcome to the Forum @adaddinsane 

Which router are you using? A Plusnet Hub One with a big blue light on the front?

If it is that, it offers connections on 2 frequencies. By default they have the same ID and the advice is to give them different IDs, but that is probably for another time. See https://community.plus.net/t5/My-Router/Devices-stop-working-on-5-GHz-connection-Wifi-drops/m-p/1395...for how to do it.

Is it possible that those of your laptops/phones etc. that are connecting to the Hub are using one frequency and those that aren't are trying the other? Or to put that another way, could the WIFI password have changed on one but not the other frequency?

[#3 · Accepted solution]

I'm having similar problems (also have a lot of clients [50 odd]), the only way I found to recover the situation - temporarily as within a few days get problems again - is to power the router off then on again.

Plusnet One router with latest firmware.

[#4]

Using the reboot the router option, I got everything back up and running but I will apply the fix you've suggested.

Luckily I'm no noob in this but the idea of switching the router off-and-on-again seemed a smidge too dangerous, since I'm a web developer work from home and didn't want to risk losing everything. 😀

[#5]

Thanks for that, at least it got it running again.

I'll be applying the (hopefully) more permanent fix as well.