Win7 stuck on identifying network

I looked all over the web, and I saw many solutions to this issue, but none of them worked for me, and I don't know what to do anymore.

It's a win7 PC, professional edition x64. I'm using a Realtek network adapter.

Things I tried:

• removing the driver and re-installing
• Installing the IPv4 protocol
• restarting the computer
• in cmd: ipconfig/all, ipconfig/release, ipconfig/renew (I used to have IP conflicts, but not anymore)
• Made sure that the IP and DNS are chosen dynamically
• stopping the Bonjour service
• removing Bonjour from the windows firewall allowed programs
• Setting a static IP (but the addresses might have been wrong)

3 Answers

This can have many causes, but the most common ones are:

• Incompatible mode (your wifi card is too old)
• Noisy signal (Something else running on the same channel? Gain too high?)
• Wrong wifi password (For some reason, it takes Win7 ages to figure this one out)
• The SSID isn't actually there anymore, but windows thinks it is. (SSID physically moved, or is switched off)

In addition, in my line of work where I have to switch between wireless networks a lot, I've found a bug where Win7 hangs on identifying like you described. This happens when disconnecting from a network, then trying to connect to that same network again. The workaround is to disconnect as normal, then select a different network, then select the one you want to connect to, and hit the connect button.

Note:Are you sure the network is functioning as intended? Have you tested it with a different device?

For me I solved this by disabling the TCP/IPv6 protocol under the Local Area Connection properties.

When I looked at the Network Connection Details Status, there was no default gateway or DNS server assigned for TCP/IPv6. I believe this is because the way my router is setup for content filtering, IPv6 is disabled so that the IPv4 DNS server specified is always used.

Once I disabled IPv6, then Windows no longer was trying to identify the network, and immediately the network was identified, and the identifying 'hourglass' went away.

I had the exact same issue. The solution for my laptop was: Device Manager - Network Adapters - Realtek P Cle GBE Family Connector and found it had been disabled. I enabled it and restarted and it worked!