XP-Style Wireless Network Repair

[cdd]

Windows XP had a Repair option for Wireless Networks that did various things likely to make wireless networks work again (such as disabling/enabling the adapter, renewing the IP, clearing the NetBT cache, etc).

I liked this and it was good. But Vista's "Diagnose And Repair" functionality is not on a par at all. It doesn't do any of these things, it just sits around "Diagnosing" and then comes up with some stupid suggestions and, if you are VERY lucky, offers to let you renew your IP address just this once (yeah, thanks).

So, is there an easy way of getting the XP style try-everything functionality back that seemed a lot more successful at repairing networks? (Or is it just my imagination?)

[Alexia]

Yup. Install XP.

I find with the other half's network issues usually with Vista that more often than not, disabling the wireless network adaptor in the System > Device Manager box usually kick starts a new IP detection process. Don't know if that's more luck than anything else but it's how I do it.

[Nini]

Is ipconfig /release then ipconfig /renew out of the question?

[cdd]

Is ipconfig /release then ipconfig /renew out of the question?

Of course not, but it's only two (well, one) action. There are many other actions that can be taken that possibly fix Wifi connectivity issues. XP did all of these in rapid succession.

[Nick Harvey]

This may or may not be any help, but comes from a friend of mine who was bemoaning the poor quality of the 'My Pictures Slideshow' screensaver on Vista.

He simply lifted the relevant exe file off an XP installation, dropped it onto his Vista machine and now uses it happily.

Could it be as simple as lifting the repair exe off XP and dropping it onto Vista, or does it need lots of incompatible dlls as well?

Just a lateral thought.

[Pete]

on a mildly related note, I've installed Live Photo Gallery to replace the default one, this was due to me finally snapping at the fact that if you miss the next and forward buttons just just a pixel either way you get stuck in a damn slideshow. a terrible piece of interface design.

[cdd]

After some further research I found an official Microsoft web page which listed the XP commands as these:

Code: Select all

ipconfig /renew
arp -d *
nbtstat -R
nbtstat -RR
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /registerdns

Running that from an elevated BAT file seemed to do the trick if anyone else is curious

[Nick Harvey]

What's an 'elevated' bat file when you get one up your nose?

[iSon]

After some further research I found an official Microsoft web page which listed the XP commands as these:

Code: Select all

ipconfig /renew
arp -d *
nbtstat -R
nbtstat -RR
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /registerdns

Running that from an elevated BAT file seemed to do the trick if anyone else is curious

Nice one - that's really useful actually. I've found myself more than a couple of times wishing the wireless fixing in Vista was more like XP.

And I assumed "elevated" refers to running it under an Administrator account within Vista else it won't have access due to the user account annoyances described in another thread.

[cdd]

Yes, it's a bit annoying you can't just set the Run As Administrator property on a BAT file; it's grayed out. Instead, you need to create a shortcut to it, and tick the box under Advanced for the properties to the shortcut, like this.