Help Mystery WiFi failure

[rattlingroger]

My S3 communicated happily with WiFi for days before now at my current location, and also this morning. This afternoon it was unable to obtain the IP address of either of the WiFi networks available here.

I have tried to forget each of the networks, then re-establish connection. Each time the signal strength is shown as Strong or Very Strong but after validating the password the S3 fails to obtain the IP address, with the final comment that the signal strength was too poor for communication, Saved and Secured. However, my laptop and Kindle still link in correctly to the same networks. No changes have been made to the S3 since this morning.

I have tried powering the S3 down and re-booting, without any effect.

Where do I go from here? Any ideas?

 

[Rukbat]

Go someplace where there's no wifi signal. Forget the connection. Now go back to where there's a good signal again and set up the connection. (If the connection information got corrupted, and the signal is still there, the corrupted information will still be saved.)

If that doesn't fix it, it's possible that the antenna connection is bad. You can check that by trying to connect with the phone sitting on the router. If that's the case, the phone will have to be opened and the spring fingers connecting the phone to the antenna will have to be vent back into the proper position. (That's not something to do yourself - it's too easy to break the fingers off completely, or mess something up while you have the phone open.)

 

[mydian]

Try rebooting your router. I've had something similar happen to where my laptop could connect to my home wifi but my phone wouldn't. Rebooting the router fixed it.

 

[rattlingroger]

Go someplace where there's no wifi signal. Forget the connection. Now go back to where there's a good signal again and set up the connection. (If the connection information got corrupted, and the signal is still there, the corrupted information will still be saved.)

If that doesn't fix it, it's possible that the antenna connection is bad. You can check that by trying to connect with the phone sitting on the router. If that's the case, the phone will have to be opened and the spring fingers connecting the phone to the antenna will have to be vent back into the proper position. (That's not something to do yourself - it's too easy to break the fingers off completely, or mess something up while you have the phone open.)

Just to add to the mystery, this morning the S3 is working fine (again, with no intervention from me). I am away from home, so there is little I can do about the router, however my partner's S2, my laptop and both our Kindles have happily worked with WiFi throughout this mysterious event. If the S3 continues to work with the WiFi then I shall let well alone - otherwise it would seem that there is an intermittent fault on my phone.