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

[Buggwrit]

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.

[JimM11]

@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.

[XRaySpeX]

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.

[Buggwrit]

@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.

[ClivePage]

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.

[JimM11]

@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?

[ClivePage]

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.

[bobpullen]

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.

[JimM11]

@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....

[JimM11]

@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....

[Buggwrit]

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.