Cannot Download unless physically wired to network

[PG Croat]

There is someone in the company who has told me that he has been having issues with his laptop. Apparently he can get on the internet with Wi-Fi just fine but is unable to download anything unless he is physically wired to our company's network. Now he wasn't clear when he told me whether or not he can do it wired into another network.

I haven't come across this issue before and the man says that this has been an issue for four months, ever since he got it back from my office. Unfortunately I've been newly hired and have only been here for two weeks and the technician that had worked with the laptop is long gone so I'm not sure what he messed up or what he tried to fix when it was here.

Using just the wired network is not an obtion either as the man is a foreman and spends most of his time on the road and in hotels.

Do any of you guys have an idea, I'm stumped at the moment. Been trying to google this issue to see if this has happened to anybody and I haven't found anything.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Oh and it should be noted that I don't have the laptop here. Its several hours away. The plan is to control his computer remotely and try to troubleshoot possible causes. If I have to I'll have him send it here.

[Ugrashrath]

When you are accessing anything off the internet, your computer is essentially downloading a copy of the html, image, and video files to your computer, and you are viewing those. So if you are accessing the internet at all, you are 'downloading' those files.

Personally, I don't know of any reason he would be restricted to a LAN connection to downloading files, unless speed is the issue in that wireless he doesn't get a fast enough connection to download anything. Of course if downloading is an issue, the internet browsing will also be slow depending on the page (pages with many graphics will load slower).

This would also make sense if he says he can only download when connected via a wire, b/c most wired connections are 100mbs unless you are running gigabit which is even faster. While wireless can match the speeds, you have a more reliable connection going wired.

[PG Croat]

Yeah that came to mind but you know how it is when somebody who doesn't know whats wrong is telling you whats wrong over the phone. I won't be able to understand entirely until I see it.

I know he is leaving something crucial out of his description of the symptoms. I'd like to know what kind of messeges he's getting but all he tells me is that he can't download a thing. I ask him if there are messeges he gets or if he can start downloading but he just moves on to saying it works when he is wired.

I just didn't know if this was an issue anybody had heard of and I was getting stumped or if his discription was leading me out into left field.

I'm going to have to tell him to just send it to me. He hasn't been using it for four months now, a couple of days won't matter.

[Ugrashrath]

I'll have to agree with that. If he's not giving you all the information, you will never diagnose the correct problem, nor fix it. It may very will be the user, but until you test it yourself, we won't know.