win8.1 breaks network with two wifi Access Points

Hi I have two wifi APs in the home and only one has an Internet connection. the other is to access the wired LAN.

Last week I updated from win8 to win8.1 and thought everything was going well until I started getting wired LAN dropouts.

I have traced it back to 8.1 handling connection to wifi APs. In win8, I was able to have "Connect automatically" for BOTH wifi adapters on this laptop. Now when I try to connect to the non-Internet AP, win8.1 announces (correctly) "Limited access" and that's what win8 did too. BUT, win8.1 waits a few seconds then drops the connection with a useless message, "help me solve connectin problems," where there is NO problem. A limited connection for the AP to the wired LAN is OK as it was in 8.

So now I am stuck with no home LAN access unless I drop the Internet AP and connect to the LAN AP.

Also, in the great wisdom of 8.1, because it is only a "limited" connection, it does not remember the Passphrase so I have to type it in every time. So much for progress.

Can anyone please suggest what to do to get past this behavior and have a "limited" connection as OK as it is with win8?

So basically you are using the computer to act as a Router to "Bridge" the connections between the two routers. Not a good way to do it.

HUH? Where do you get two routers? The wifi for the Internet is a tethered phone with unlimited 4G data so the phone is the router. The LAN is on a data switch for the wired distribution so no router there. The data switch has an AP plugged into one of the ports.

Note! It was all working well until win8.1, so some help would actually, er, um help.

CarvedDuck said:

HUH? Where do you get two routers? The wifi for the Internet is a tethered phone with unlimited 4G data so the phone is the router. The LAN is on a data switch for the wired distribution so no router there. The data switch has an AP plugged into one of the ports.

Note! It was all working well until win8.1, so some help would actually, er, um help.

Click to expand...

I read 100% what you posted. You did not read what I posted. Go back and re-read my reply to your first post.

A lot of people state Access Point, but mean they have a router. You have two networks. Which means that you have two routers.

I have an issue very similar to CarvedDuck. However, my issue is that my networks are:
1. Dial-up Network (for internet access)
2. LAN (for home network and printer sharing)

The LAN does not in any way attempt to share the dial-up on my computer. There are 2 computers on the network, each use a dial-up connection separately.

My problem is this: When I am online, I lose access to the LAN and can no longer access the scanning functions of my all-in-one network printer. When I hang up, the print functions return to normal. I recently upgraded from Windows 7 to 8.1, and never had the issue until 8.1.

It seems that any time I attempt more than one network connection with 8.1, then the OS disables other connections leaving only one active at a time.

This is entirely unacceptable, and was wondering if anyone knew how to configure 8.1 to behave properly in these types of situations.

When I reset my connection to the router in order to handle printing/scanning, then suddenly my browser can't find any web pages, because it is now trying to go online through the LAN instead of the dial-up connection, and I have to close and restart my browser to get the connection back again. Very frustrating.

Any assistance?

If you only have one wifi receiver then that is normal as it can't maintain two wifi connections. I have two receivers, one is the internal one that comes with the laptop and the other is a USB TP-link TL-WDN3900. I have my Internet connection on the internal wifi and the LAN on the TP-Link one.

Windows 8 isn't breaking anything here, the problem is that the OP has his network set up in a very unconventional way which makes zero sense to me.

I see no logic here at all and neither does Windows 8.

Although there is a Group Policy that allows you to connect to two NIC's at start up I'm not so sure it will help in this case.