So I had this issue previously, with another Dell laptop and a Killer WiFi adapter, and I didn’t take the effort to create this blog (sometimes I write a blog, just to remember a specific issue in a couple years from now) a while ago. Unfortunately, I completely forget the solution (it kicked in after an hour or so)…

The issue

You cannot connect to a public hotspot, well you can connect but the redirection page takes ages to load, you get some information displayed on the page. But you are stuck in the process of paying or accepting the legal notice before using the Internet.

Troubleshooting

Offcourse this issue bothered me because I needed the Internet. After I took the following troubleshooting steps I remembered the solution:

• Disabled the WiFi adapter
• Reset the Wifi adapter
• Restarted the WLAN Autoconfig service
• Restarted the Wi-Fi Direct Services Connection Manager Service
• ipconfig /flushdns
• ipconfig /registerdns
• ipconfig /renew
• Hard reset of the browser
• Another browser
• And finally even a restart of the machine

Solution

Then I remembered the solution after looking at all of my network adapters, I saw the Hyper-V Virtual Ethernet Adapters and a Bridge adapter and remembered this was the cause of the same issue a couple years back. I have Hyper-V installed so I can run multiple VM’s (obviously). The quick and dirty solution:

• Go to the Hyper-V Manager
• Go to Virtual Switch Manager
• Remove the Switch which is connected to your Wifi adapter (or change it to Internal or Private network)
• This will automatically reset your WiFi adapter (if not do it manually by disabling and enabling the particular network adapter)
• Connect to the public hotspot

Start the browser and it will connect to the public hotspot the way you will expect it!

Bye for now,

Daniel

Daniel Nikolic

Is interested in everything connected to technology. Has a passion for cloud, virtualization and software development. Always finds appropriate IT solutions for customers that match their needs strategically, technically and financially.

Core qualities
Quick thinker, result driven, ambitious, customer-friendly, enthusiastic

Hobbies
Running, listening to music, good food and doing fun things with family

Job description
CTO PepperByte, LoadGen, and BlueParq