Windows 7/8 showing "Default Gateway Not Available" or "No Connection To The Internet"

[Doug]

Just a recent issue I stumbled upon and wondered if anyone else has....

When I sniffed the air with OmniPeek and the network the ap was on with WireShark, I see the arp request for the gateway go to the router, the reply from the gateway router is sent out to the suspect machine in the air, the PC ack's the packet but never populates the arp cache. I have looked at both arp responses in a working vs failing scenario, both packets are the same. I don't see this being a wireless vendor issue, it's more of a Microsoft problem.
The only way I have been able to resolve it was to disable IP Helper (start up too) from Services, reboot the machine. I was seeing 3 to 4 drops per day but since disabling this Service the machines I have been testing with have not seen the issue again. It's worth trying.

IP Helper:
Provides tunnel connectivity using IPv6 transition technologies (6to4, ISATAP, Port Proxy, and Teredo), and IP-HTTPS. If this service is stopped, the computer will not have the enhanced connectivity benefits that these technologies offer.

Machines Tested and Fixed:

Lenovo E540
Lenovo W540
Acer Aspire One
Dell Latitude E6420

The ip helper service change was made on 40 laptops, a dozen of which would fail in about an hour. So far 0 out of the 40 has seen the issue since making the change and rebooting (rebooting is key after the disable) the laptops. It's been about 5 days.

[steffanwalker04]

Hey Justin,

Is there any permanent fix for the same? I'm having both Dell & ASUS laptop. I never faced this issue with ASUS but somehow this error appears on my Dell Inspiron 15. Is it brand specific or there's some serious issues with Dell drivers?

[hsachse]

Hello Doug, interesting solution. Never went in this issue, but I think Win8.1 is a step backwards related managing/troubleshooting wireless networks. For the simplest things you have to use netsh, thats really not user friendly.

At two customer installations I have the phenomenon that Win7 (maybe 8.x, too) shows "limited access" for the wifi connection (at this time the client has finished dhcp and has a ip address/correct gateway) and i takes serveral seconds sinces this message disappears. Windows 2008 R2 is used as dhcp server.

Do you know a solution how to fix this issue or tweak settings?

Best Regards
Hartmut

[hsachse]

Some helpful commands/tools included in windows os are, netsh, wireless trace log and eventlog viewer (WLAN-AutoConfig, DHCP-Service) to troubleshoot issues on client side.

This ms technet article is a good starting point for understanding how to work with the tools:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766215%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

But I think Doug, you know all of tools before  Maybe this is helpful for others.

Best Regards
Hartmut

[hsachse]

Do you have a wireshark trace example of a dhcp request from Windows 7 to compare it with a "faulty" client? Would be interesting what microsoft check to switch from "no internet/limited access" to a connection with full access.