When the wifi isn't working

Open your wifi settings and read what the device says.

If it shows your network as connected but nothing loads, the device has joined the router fine and the break is somewhere past it. That is Symptom A.

If the network does not appear, will not let you join or rejects the password, the device cannot get onto the router in the first place. That is Symptom B.

These are different things. The fixes barely overlap. Pick your symptom, follow that path, and ignore the other one.

The wifi handshake worked. The link beyond the router did not.

Restart the router. Power off at the plug, wait 30 seconds, power back on, give it two or three minutes to fully wake. A restart is a power-cycle: it keeps your settings and just clears the router's temporary memory and re-establishes the connection to your provider. This is not the same as the factory reset button, which wipes everything. We will come back to that distinction, because people confuse the two and regret it.

Check the line is actually up. Plug a laptop straight into the router with an ethernet cable. If the wired connection works, your broadband is fine and the problem is purely the wifi. If ethernet also fails, the line itself is down: no internet at all picks it up from there. Either way, check your provider's status page and whether your area is down on mobile data before you blame your own kit.

If the line is up but pages still will not load, the usual culprit is name lookup. DNS is the system that turns a website name into an address your device can reach; when it fails, your connection works perfectly but your browser has no way to find anything. Restarting the router fixes most cases. As a test, you can point a device at a public resolver like Google's 8.8.8.8 or Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1, though that only helps if name lookup is genuinely the problem.

Once the line is confirmed up, a quick speed test tells you whether you are back to normal or limping.

Different fault, different list. Work down it in order.

Toggle the wifi off and on, or flip airplane mode on the device and off again. It sounds insultingly basic. It also clears the single most common cause, which is a device that has sulked itself off the network.

Forget the network and rejoin. In your wifi settings, forget the network, then reconnect with the password from scratch. This clears a stale saved profile so the device authenticates fresh, and it fixes a startling proportion of "it just stopped connecting" faults.

Check you are looking at the right band. Many routers broadcast two networks: 5GHz, which is faster but does not travel far, and 2.4GHz, which is slower but reaches across the house. From the back bedroom your phone may only see the 2.4GHz one. If your router splits them into two named networks, try the other.

Check the password, including caps lock, and that you are joining your own network rather than a neighbour's or a guest one. Then, only if none of that works, restart the router so it rebroadcasts cleanly.

If one device fails while everything else connects happily, stop looking at the router. The fault is on that device. If every device fails the same way, it is the network.

The global device-support sites will happily walk you through Windows menus and never mention that your router is a specific box from a specific provider that behaves in its own specific way.

The big divide is who owns the wire. Most UK lines, whether you pay BT, Sky, Vodafone, Plusnet, EE or TalkTalk, run over the Openreach network. That matters because only your provider can run a line test and raise a fault with Openreach; you cannot ring Openreach yourself. Virgin Media is the exception, running its own separate cable network with its own outage map to check.

On the wifi itself, provider routers behave differently. Some hubs broadcast one combined network and quietly decide which band your device uses; others keep 2.4GHz and 5GHz as two separate names you choose between. If you cannot find your network, that split is the first thing to check. LED labels and colours differ by model too, so check the manual for your exact hub rather than trusting a generic guide that assumes everyone owns the same router.

If ethernet fails alongside the wifi, your wifi was never the problem. The line is down, and that changes what you are owed.

Report the fault to your provider so they can test the line. If it is a total loss of service that is not fully fixed after two full working days, Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme pays £10.34 per calendar day until it is. A missed engineer appointment, or one cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice, is £32.31. Most of the largest providers are signed up, including BT, Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, EE, Vodafone, Plusnet, Hyperoptic and Zen, though smaller altnets often are not, so check yours. It pays automatically as a bill credit; you do not have to chase it. Details are on Ofcom's automatic compensation page.

If the complaint stalls, you can take it to a free, independent ADR scheme six weeks after you first complained, or sooner with a deadlock letter, per Ofcom's rules from 8 April 2026.

And if the line keeps coming back broken, the kit is fine but the deal is not, that is the point to look at switching.