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Play Store Won't Work on WiFi

Todd Kageals

Newbie
Mar 10, 2016
13
4
Guys,

I picked up a GS7E a couple of nights ago. It's working great but there is one issue. The Google Play Store will not download ANYTHING over wi-fi. It does just fine over 3/4G but not on wi-fi. It will load web pages through Chrome on wi-fi. The issue appears contained only to the Play Store and only on Wi-Fi (at work and at home). Anybody have any idea what is goin on here?

Thanks,

Todd
 
Regarding Verizon, just to confirm are you referring to Verizon as just your cellular phone service, or both your cellular and your home Internet? Also, have your tried using WiFi at a some other location and you're still having this issue with just Google Play and that one mail account? That might help determine if your problem is related to your phone or to your home WiFi connectivity.
 
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Oops, never mind my previous response. I didn't catch that you are having this issue at home and at work. Sounds like an issue with either your phone's WiFi or the Google Play app itself. If Snakeyeskm suggestion doesn't work, try going into your Settings >> Application manager and doing a 'Force stop' and 'Clear cache' on the Google Play Store app.

You might also want to boot your S7 up in Safe Mode. That might at least eliminate the chance something you've installed recently is causing the problem.
http://www.technipages.com/galaxy-s7-turn-safe-mode
 
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Oops, never mind my previous response. I didn't catch that you are having this issue at home and at work. Sounds like an issue with either your phone's WiFi or the Google Play app itself. If Snakeyeskm suggestion doesn't work, try going into your Settings >> Application manager and doing a 'Force stop' and 'Clear cache' on the Google Play Store app.

You might also want to boot your S7 up in Safe Mode. That might at least eliminate the chance something you've installed recently is causing the problem.
http://www.technipages.com/galaxy-s7-turn-safe-mode

I tried the force stop, cleared data, cleared cache, uninstalled updates. I just don't know what else to try. I haven't done the safe mode, only because I haven't installed anything new.
 
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This suggestion is something that's a doesn't have a lot of chance of being a solution to your sporadic WiFi problem but have you tried clearing the system cache partition? As WiFi is more of a system function than a general app function maybe there's just a corrupted file in the system cache partition that needs to be clear out manually.
http://recomhub.com/blog/how-to-clear-cache-on-galaxy-s7-and-galaxy-s7-edge/
 
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More info: Played around at home for a while. Did a wifi speed test on the phone and got really good results (around 60mbs or whatever the unit is). Downloaded a couple of apps from the Samsung app store or whatever they call it and got superfast downloads. Tried the play store and it WILL NOT WORK THROUGH WIFI. Works fine if I download through the cellular network. I can't have all my apps updating through the cell network! Any way to uninstall/reinstall the play store app?
 
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Maybe related....The youtube app does not appear to be working on wi fi either:thinking: YouTube runs just fine (very fast) through my home wifi on my Surface tablet but the phone will not load videos when it's on wifi.

Who would one call for support on this? It's not my ISP as all that stuff works fine on other devices. Google, Samsung, or Verizon?
 
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Alright I had the same issue. It seems like I found a temporary solution to this problem.
One thing you can do is to download DNSet app and use this after you turn on your wifi.

The other option is to tweak your wifi. My router supports "guest wifi" function, and my gs7 works great on guest wifi.

This problem seems to be from DNS problem of either lollipop or system webview app.
I do not know when they are going to release an update for this but this is a big problem.
So try to call samsung support and let them know of this issue.
 
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So...I tried:
2 Factory Resets
Deleted my Google Account and added a new one.
Tried all kinds of network settings I found on-line.

Finally got it resolved by turning on the guest network on my router at home. YouTube and the Play Store now fly....like 10 second app downloads and videos that startup right away. I don't have enough understanding of networks to figure out why it works but it does. I tried switching back to the secured network and it went back to not working. The secure network works for other apps on the S7 and on all my other devices (iPad, surface pro tablet, wife's iPhone, Android Tablet, desktop PC). For example, YouTube will not load videos (but it does load descriptions) on the S7 when on the secured network. Put the S7 on the guest network and it loads videos just fine. However, the surface pro and all of the other devices we have in the house will load videos through YouTube on the secured network just fine. Same behavior with the PlayStore. I assume it's something about the encryption used in my secured network setup? I don't know....at least my apps will update now!
 
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I had a similar problem with my Galaxy S7. I found that the google play store was insistent on using ipv6 to communicate, even though I do not have the network to support it. My isp is not a adopter of ipv6, so far. I am not exactly certain what change I made on the wireless router fixed this issue, but its one of two. I dropped the security down to WPA1 (TKIP+AES) from WPA2/1 , and I disabled WMM extensions on the radio. I also made certain pfsense had ipv6 completely disabled. Strangest thing is everything else worked fine, just google play store. I'm leaning towards the WMM. Later.

Justin
 
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I have been having issues with WiFi with my AT&T internet service. I can use my tablet and streaming devices with no issue but when I try to use my S7 it just wont work.

One thing that helped which is not ideal is to turn off Bluetooth. Once I did that, WiFi all the sudden started to work. It seems that there might be an issue with Bluetooth interfering with the signal. Hope this works for others too!!
 
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... My isp is not a adopter of ipv6, so far. ...I'm leaning towards the WMM...
Justin

Thanks for the clue.

My TPLink router had IPv6 disabled and WMM is permanently checked (grayed out). My phone always shows an IPv4 address along with a IPv6 address that appears to be link-local, when connected to my router (Wifi->More->Advanced->IP address at the end of the page). It wouldn't work in that state since Play store services are apparently trying to use the link-local v6 address which cannot be routed.

On an open network which does work, there is only a single IPv4 address listed, and no v6 link local address, so that lack of confusion would explain why those networks work.

My ISP (Comcast) does support IPv6, so I enabled IPv6 on the router. Once it picked up a v6 address and the right DNS, etc from the ISP, my S7 Edge now shows an additional two valid v6 addresses in addition to the v4 and v6 link-local addresses, and now works at full speed without any VPN workarounds.

So, it appears that a combination of multiple adapters (physical/virtual?) in the phone and newer high-end routers that support IPv6 is the root of the problem. There also appear to be two diametrically opposite ways to workaround it:
  1. If your ISP does not support IPv6, disable it on your router and make sure your phone only shows a single v4 address, and no link-local v6 addresses.
  2. If your ISP does support IPv6, enable IPv6 on your router and make sure you are getting valid IPv6 addresses on your phone.
The real solution is that Samsung/Google need to fix the services so they don't pick up link-local IPv6 addresses and get the phone into this state in the first place.

Hope this helps.
 
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bhl62,

Thanks! That's the answer for me. I tried everything else and that finally solved the problem.

One more thing to add, At&t DOES support IPv6 and it WAS turned on by default on my Arris NVG589 residential gateway so I did the following:

Went into router's settings and turned IPv6 off and saved configuration.
Result: still could not get Play Store to update.
Turned IPv6 back on and saved configuration.
Result: It works!!!

So, for those having this problem, if you see that IPv6 is on, don't just assume that it is not the problem. Go ahead and give this a try.
 
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Sorry for my idiocy, but can you explain a little further how to "make sure your phone only shows a single v4 address, and no link-local v6 addresses." From above, it seems like you go (Wifi->More->Advanced->IP address at the end of the page), but when I go into wifi->More on my phone, I don't have an advanced option.

Once again, sorry if I've misunderstood this. But I really want to try and get this issue resolved. Its driving me nuts.

My ISP does not support ipv6. I see that option in my router settings and it is unchecked, but I need clarification what I need to do on my phone to get around this issue.
 
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There's really nothing you personally can do on your phone - only Google/Samsung have the power to fix their bug of trying to use an IPv6 address that's not routable (i.e. cannot be used to communicate on the network).

I did find that my phone always setup an unusable IPv6 address even when disabled on the router, but since my ISP supports IPv6, I was able to fix it easily enough by enabling IPv6. In your case you may have to work with your router folks to figure out if there is something that can be done at that level or if it can only be fixed in the OS -- essentially a user-accessible setting in Android to disable IPv6 or a fix to properly handle link-local addresses. Until then the VPN workaround seems to be your only hope.
 
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I did find tonight through dumb luck (I hadn't read anything about any kind of VPN fixes and I don't even really have the knowledge and knowhow to know how/why this works) that when I connect my phone through my VPN (I use Private Internet Access), everything works as it should. I actually hadn't read anything about this working and was more something I just happen to stumble across. I would actually really like to know how/why this works if anyone can explain. As I said, my knowledge isn't strong in this area.

Which VPN workaround are you referring to? Similar to what I've done?
 
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