My Dell laptop is not showing that it is connected to the network. A red cross is shown over the network icon in the system tray. The red cross is showing even though the laptop is connected to both the wired LAN and wifi.

I have tried turning the wifi card off and on to make Windows wake up, but no change.

Dell Laptop. Windows 7.

Jim G, January 2016

That's useful Electro - cheers

XXX, January 2016

It appen that some icons in the notification area to not show the correct state, or even to go missing. It's a glitch that can affect any of those icons.


What I do in that case:

Press and hold Ctrl + Shift and tap the Esc key to open the task manager.
Find "Explorer.exe" in the process tab.
Kill it. (end process)
The task bar and ALL desktop icons will disapear, it's normal and expected.
Also, all keyboard shortcuts/hotkeys will also stop functioning.

Switch to the applications tab.
Click the "New task" button.
In the box that pop up, type "explorer" and click OK.

This will restart the explorer and, usualy, correct any problem notification icon, including erroneous and missing ones.

Electro, January 2016