First, check the date on your laptop. In some cases, we've seen laptops that have somehow had their dates set to the far future. When this happens, it exposes a bug in the networking layer that prevents it from connecting to the internet. If you manually correct the date, it should connect fine.
If the date is correct, it's possible that your /etc/resolv.conf
file has been
overwritten. To see if that's the case, do the following:
- Hit ctrl + alt + t to open a terminal window.
- Type
cat /etc/resolv.conf
and hit enter. You should see the following printed out:
nameserver 208.67.222.123
nameserver 208.67.220.123
If you don't see that, then you can fix the problem by correcting that file:
- Make sure you're in a terminal window (hit ctrl + alt + t to open one).
- Type
sudo echo -e "nameserver 208.67.222.123\nnameserver 208.67.220.123" > /etc/resolv.conf
- Triple check that you entered it, all on one line, EXACTLY as above. Then hit enter.
- At the prompt, enter your password.
- Reboot your computer.
Try connecting to the internet again, and hopefully it will be fixed.
This can sometimes happen when the laptop's date is set to a few years in the future (we've seen this on some of our laptops after shipping them). If you manually correct the date, your browser will no longer complain about expired certificates.
If all else fails, and you can't get your laptop working, a fresh reinstall of Ubuntu will usually work. To reinstall, follow the reinstallation instructions in the README.