topic Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub in Broadband & Landline

After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

Buggwrit — Fri, 29 May 2026 15:45:23 GMT

I had to accept being booted off Plusnet onto EE to retain my home phone. The switch-over mostly went smoothly BUT - sod's law - my principal desktop workstation won't connect.

8 devices (two android phones, two android tablets, two Windows 10 laptops, a smart tv and a pvr) all connected without issue but my Windows 7 main pc won't. It doesn't pick up the EE network name in the list of available networks. If I select 'Other network' and enter this manually followed by the passcode it eventually reports it's unable to connect. Doesn't say why, of course. If I hotspot my phone it sees that and connects straight away.

The Windows troubleshooter can't resolve the problem. It just suggests rebooting the hub. This, predictably, doesn't help.

The hub is an EE Smart Hub Plus SH31B. The wireless card in the PC is an Asus PCE-N15 11n. The PC is running Windows 7 Professional SP1 with 8GB RAM.

On the advice of some knowledgeable members of the Plusnet community forum I've tried turning on the 2.4GHz compatible wi-fi and even turned off the standard 2.4GHz but that hasn't helped. I've tried going into 'Manage wireless networks' in the Network and Sharing Centre and manually adding both the standard and -Comp network names to the list, with the -Comp at the top which Windows should try first.

Still nothing. When I open 'Connect to a network' neither of them appear in the list, just neighbouring networks. Very frustrating.

Any thoughts gratefully received.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

jak26 — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:08:50 GMT

A wireless N card is pretty old - for a main PC a WiFI AC card / USB stick would be a starting point - or ideally wired - although Win 7 - in fact anything other than W11 - isnt ideal either. When my current PC stopped seeing SSIDs I used the common solution of uplugging from the mains socket for a while which fully powers down any devices running off the standby rail. If you have another router (e.g. the hub 2) that used to work then try it as an access point - turn off DCHP an connect to the ISP router by LAN.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

JimM11 — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:08:35 GMT

@Buggwrit The Asus info linked,PCE-N15｜Wireless Adapters｜ASUS Global

Try changing the name off the comp network ssid and not have the - dashes in the name, it is WPA2-PSK and 5Ghz operation as it does goto 300Mb/s as a speed. So use the comp 5Ghz, and turn off the 2.4Ghz for connection within the web manager looking at the EE Hub.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

XRaySpeX — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:14:45 GMT

That'll be a old deprecated device. Older or weaker devices may not be compatible with the default WiFi settings of EE Smart Hubs. Try setting up Compatible WiFi on the router under Advanced > Wireless Settings > Config > Compatible WiFi (it defaults to 2.4 GHz & WPA2) & connect your problematic 2.4 GHz devices to that.

@Buggwrit wrote:
I've tried going into 'Manage wireless networks' in the Network and Sharing Centre and manually adding both the standard and -Comp network names to the list, with the -Comp at the top which Windows should try first.

It's not a matter of Win trying anything. You have to explicitly choose to connect to the Compatible WiFi SSID.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

Buggwrit — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:28:09 GMT

Try setting up Compatible WiFi on the router under Advanced > Wireless Settings > Config > Compatible WiFi (it defaults to 2.4 GHz & WPA2) & connect your problematic 2.4 GHz devices to that.

@XRaySpeX If you read my initial post you'll see I've already tried that. I even tried turning off the standard 2.4GHz in case of a conflict.

One of the Plusnet community members stated that my Asus card is only a 2.4GHz device so that implies there would be no point in trying to use the compatible 5GHz as suggested by @JimM11 .

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

JimM11 — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:37:35 GMT

@Buggwrit Really don't care what you were told by the PN person, wireless N at 300Mb/s requires 5Ghz operation. It's all up to you.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

XRaySpeX — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:44:00 GMT

Yes, but you seem to assume that Win will choose which SSID to connect to, but it won't. It's you that needs to get the PC to connect to the Compatible WiFi.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

Buggwrit — Sat, 30 May 2026 19:04:39 GMT

@JimM11 "Really don't care what you were told by the PN person, wireless N at 300Mb/s requires 5Ghz operation. It's all up to you."

Well you'll have to bear with me. I can only go by what people tell me.

@XRaySpeX I don't assume anything of thesort. I realise perfectly well that I have to select the network to connect to. It's difficult if the required network doesn't show in the list. I've been looking at USB dongles and found this. It claims to be dual-band and compliant with IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac. Would this be suitable?

I must ask you all for your forbearance. In addition to the connectivity problem I'm also faced with a problem with email that first occurred following Plusnet moving my account to Greenby. After a lot of hassle and assistance from the Plusnet Community this appeared to have been resolved and had been working smoothly for several months but since the switch-over it's reappeared and the previously applied fixes no longer work. I can receive mail but can't send it.

I'm 82 years old ond finding all these problems are causing a lot of stess.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

JimM11 — Sat, 30 May 2026 19:46:55 GMT

@Buggwrit Good for you stand your ground, the old wifi card in the old pc running a really old software, you are right to say what you have ""Respect to that"" please do accept my apologies, main trouble is getting old drivers to work, if i was you would think about getting hold off and old Tp-Link RE like the TL-WA854RE | 300Mbps Wi-Fi Range Extender | TP-Link United Kingdom, good chance that it will connect to both the EE Hub and your PC, it's another option. Not sure if the one you mentioned would work on a PC as may be designed for telephony only.

Your windows 10 laptops that connected fine, did you try setting the name on the comp of the EE hub with all the dashes etc removed, old cards not sure of limits on character size and specifics etc to see if it even shows up, and yes just start with the 2.4Ghz band on only and WPA2-PSK as the wifi securities...

Once you set the name on the Comp side, do a 5 minute off on the hub, when it restart's you should see it change an be available, use one off the other devices like the win10 laptop to see what is available and transmitting from the hub! There is a lot going on with those hubs, 2.4/5Ghz Main band and there Hidden ssid's that you cannot see, ee wifi and it's hidden etc etc

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

Buggwrit — Sat, 30 May 2026 19:52:14 GMT

@JimM11 I haven't tried removing the dash from the -Comp name so will try that. Also I haven't rebooted the hub since making the changes to will try that also.

I did wonder about thecompatibility of the USB dongle amd I would feel more comfortable installing a newer PCI-e card so if all else fails I'm ready to throw a bit of cash at that.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

JimM11 — Sat, 30 May 2026 20:02:51 GMT

@Buggwrit Got it, have not had a win7 based PC now going on at least 15 years or so, the main problem is finding old hardware that has win7 drivers to boot, will take a look around, but do try if you get time as you have said, another thing to keep in mind is what you had for the old PN hub as it's ssid/password you can set those values direct into the comp settings on that EE Hub if you still have those to hand.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

XRaySpeX — Sat, 30 May 2026 20:09:17 GMT

I see you are having trouble sending emails on PN/Greenway's email service. I seem to remember they are wrongly advising you that you should be using Port 25 unencrypted for SMTP. Port 25 will never work when you are not sending emails over the email provider's (PN's) own network. You are not; you are sending over EE's network. Change Port 25 to Port 587 SSL/TLS ON or failing that Port 465 SSL/TLS ON.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

Buggwrit — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:46:30 GMT

@XRaySpeX Sorry for the delay in responding. My SMTP settings are:

Server Name: relay.force9.net

Port: 587

Connection Security STARTTLS (also tried with None).

These settings were found necessary as soon as I was moved to Greenby and my email had been working satisfactorily* for months until the switch to EE. Now the original problem of being able to receive mail but not send it has resurfaced.

When trying to send messages I get this response:

"Login to server relay.force9.net with username ********** failed."

followed by:

Sending of the message failed.
Unable to authenticate to Outgoing server (SMTP) relay.force9.net. Please check the password and verify the 'Authentication method' in 'Account Settings | Outgoing server (SMTP)'.

Fortunately I can still send mail using Greenby's webmail which implies my credentials are correct.

* I say 'satisfactorily' because sometimes Thunderbird will report an authentication error. I have it set to check for mail every 5 minutes and occasionally I'll come back to the PC and find a stack of these errors. I just clear them and eventually it sorts itself out. I can go weeks between these episodes so I'm pretty sure the problem lies with Greenby.

I'm now considering looking for a new email provider. One has been suggested by a member of the Plusnet community who has also been having problems with Greenby. The company concerned looks very good with around a 95% rating on Trustpilot.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

ClivePage — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 20:42:09 GMT

I've had a similar problem as we just been forced to move from Plusnet to EE. All devices worked except an enderly Lenovo Z51 laptop running Windows 10, that we keep going as a backup and for a few special jobs like reading memory cards. This laptop simply could not see the EE Hub access point name on either 2.4 or 5 GHz. I tried the compatibility mode but that didn't work either. I think the problem is the the laptop does not use the latest wifi standards. The compatibility mode had options for "WPA2-Personal" or "WPA-WPA2-Personal" but I couldn't get anyone to tell me what the difference between these was. It really didn't matter because neither of them worked.

I didn't fancy delving in the innards of the laptop to try to replace the wireless card with a newer one, so instead I'm spending a few pounds on a wifi USB dongle which claims to support wifi 6. I *think* this is advanced enough to work with the EE hub. I'll find out when it is delivered in a week or so. It is really annoying that nobody at Plusnet nor EE raised this as a potential problem since it is evident that quite a number of their customers are experiencing the same issues (see other postings on this forum and the Plusnet one). As a result I shall be out of pocket and have used several hours of my time just so that one or other BT subsidiary can make even more profit then they were already. But I suppose the time that I've spent on the phone to various helpline staff may have dented that a bit. If so: good.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

JimM11 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:02:33 GMT

@ClivePage Really not much with that laptop especially if it worked on the older hub, did you give the Ethernet connection a try on the EE Hub?

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

ClivePage — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:09:01 GMT

Yes, perhaps I should have said. With an actual Ethernet cable (which I'd not used in a long time) the old laptop connected without problems but I want to use it in a room some way from the hub so that isn't practical.

I suppose it's just that wifi has moved on, and I didn't know, but the old Plusnet hub worked fine with it. EE are obviously expert enough to know this is a problem with their latest hubs so they provide this "compatibility mode" but that wasn't compatible either. I see lots of postings about that, and spent an hour on the phone to find a solution, and their helpdesk people seem to realise that lots of us have similar problems - but EE just can't be bothered to provide a decent solution. Rather a poor show, I feel.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

bobpullen — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:09:05 GMT

There are network adapters out there (specifically some Realtek cards, which I think the Asus mentioned in this post is), that simply cannot 'see' WiFi 6 networks. Plenty of chatter on the Internet if you look for it.

Unless you can find updated drivers for them, then you're out of luck as there's no way to disable WiFi 6 on the EE hubs.

As you've suggested @ClivePage - a cheap WiFi 6 USB adapter is probably the least hassle.

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

JimM11 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:27:17 GMT

@ClivePage Had to do it with an VM 5x Hub and the ring doorbell for the son, bell would just never connect to the VM, threw a TP-Link RE in, did seamless roaming connected the Ring to that and off it went, one has to do what is needed to get it all going, guess i have been real lucky not one single problem with anything yet touch wood....

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

JimM11 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:32:25 GMT

@bobpullen Just did a new Sharp Freely TV connection to a BT Smart Hub 2 few weeks ago, it seen the network fine, would just not auto connect, did the usual 5Ghz off etc finally and only way was go on the TV type the password with the onscreen keyboard and bang it connected and off it went, no network issues at all after that....

Re: After switching to EE one of my devices won't connect to the new hub

Buggwrit — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:37:41 GMT

Well, things just go from bad to worse with this connection issue. I picked up the TP-Link extender today. Tried to connect it to the hub using WPS. That would have been too easy wouldn't it? Needless to say it didn't work so I hooked it up to the laptop using an ethernet cable and eventually managed to get it to connect to both the 5GHz and 2.4GHzComp networks.

Next I fired up the Windows 7 PC and went into 'Connect to a network'. WeyHey!!! the extender showed up in the list so put in the security code and it came back and said it couldn't connect. Now the 5GHz and 2.4GHzComp have different passwords so I went back to 'Connect to a network' and tried again. This time the extender was missing from the list !!!!

I thought ok, I'll try a reboot so shut the PC down and restarted it and now it won't boot at all. It gives a long bleep instead of the normal short one and although there's some disk activity the screen stays blank. I've tried turning off the mains power, waiting a few minutes and turning on again. Same result so looks like I'm stuffed and another fifty quid down the drain. 😠😠

I'm beginning to think this PC has a curse on it.