Can't connect laptop to hidden network

[Dannyx]

Good day folks. This issue has been driving me up the wall lately and I decided I'd have to discuss it with someone else, since I couldn't possibly solve it myself. I've got a laptop which refuses to connect to hidden SSIDs. It's a pretty nasty thing - it's got an Atheros wireless card on it currently...been through the "reflow" oven a couple of times, managed to bring it back from the dead a couple of times....that's beside the point. The point is I CANNOT get this thing to connect to hidden SSIDs: it always says "was unable to connect to"...I tried manually creating a profile, reinstalling the wireless card, even changing the card and nothing helped...it's got win7 Pro running on it. There's probably some small quirk that I'm missing, like you know when browsers refuse to display pages because the date is off - that sort of stuff.....any ideas ?
Yes, if I unhide the SSID, it works and virtually every other device in my house works without a problem with it hidden. Please don't suggest unhiding the SSID and leave it like that...the question is why would a device NOT connect to a hidden SSID in general

[stj]

are you setting the channel number?
if you arent broadcasting the ssid then how will the laptop know what channel to be on?

[Dannyx]

I managed to get it going eventually with a third WLAN card. How can you set the channel number in Windows ? I don't remember there being such option.

[Dannyx]

..but now I've ran into another issue: it takes it a very long time after startup to connect on its own. It does it eventually, but only after like 3 minutes :|

[RJARRRPCGP]

Originally Posted by Dannyx

..but now I've ran into another issue: it takes it a very long time after startup to connect on its own. It does it eventually, but only after like 3 minutes :|

Sounds a lot like a bad cat. cable. Is that with wifi? If everything otherwise looks fine, then I would do a real-deal fresh reinstall of the OS! If it's with wifi, run a command prompt as administrator and run tracert!

Reply with the tracert results. If there's packet loss, then you're on the same kind of boat as I was, which is most likely a bad wifi receiver and transmitter.

[diif]

Originally Posted by Dannyx

I managed to get it going eventually with a third WLAN card. How can you set the channel number in Windows ? I don't remember there being such option.

The channel is set on the transmitting device not the receiving. It's in the router settings.

The question for me is why hide the SSID in the first place. It's more likely to attract skiddie hack attempts due to it being hidden and does nothing to improve security.

[Dannyx]

Originally Posted by diif

The question for me is why hide the SSID in the first place

I dunno...it's more of a mental comfort than anything, since I'm perfectly aware it's useless otherwise...I got MAC filtering going on too, which I reckon is a step-up.

[diif]

MAC spoofing isn't hard. A decent admin password and wifi password using WPA2 + AES is usually all you need.

I think hiding the SSID has the opposite affect, it's more likely to attract attention.

[Dannyx]

Originally Posted by diif

A decent admin password and wifi password using WPA2 + AES is usually all you need.

Got that too

[stj]

change the ssid to look like a printer or some other "connected" junk - that may put a few people off.

[TechGeek]

Such as Nest-Thermostat-3

[momaka]

I had that happen today on a Windows 7 laptop that I was cleaning up too. But it only happened once. After I pulled up the wireless list and tried again the second time, it connected fine.

Meanwhile, none of my XP machines have ever had a problem with that. I'll just chuck that as another random Windows 7 bug that will probably never get fixed, among many others. Or is it not?