I have a Windows 8 computer, set up to connect to a wireless network, with a network bridge to pass the network on to a NAS box (running FreeNAS) over ethernet.
In general, this set up works fine. It allows both the Windows and the NAS boxes to be accessed from elsewhere on the network. However, occasionally, inexplicably, Windows fails to connect to the wireless network (over 802.11n, 2.4GHz). If I disable the network bridge, it can connect to the network fine (but, obviously, the NAS cannot), and it always reports a fairly strong signal (unsurprisingly — a line from the router to the Windows 8 computer is perpendicular to the only wall it passes through, albeit with a fair number of books and VHS shelved on each side).
Once it has failed to connect, nothing seems to convince it to reconnect, until suddenly it'll rediscover it's former connectivity.
Things I have tried:
- disabling and re-enabling the network bridge,
- disabling and re-enabling the wireless connection,
- disabling and re-enabling the ethernet connection, and
- rebooting the computer.
The only thing that brings back internet to the Windows 8 computer is disabling the network bridge entirely.
[Edit: clicking the "fix my internet connection" button on the no network page in IE causes a page-not-in-paged-area BSOD. Yay!]
