It could be that I’m incredibly unlucky, or it could be that the built-in Windows network repair tool is entirely hopeless. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve used it, but can remember with absolute certainty how many times it’s worked: none.

The most recent time I optimistically pressed the ‘Diagnose and repair’ link was this weekend, when it came up with the entirely unhelpful message that the reason for my faulty wireless network was because a cable wasn’t connected into my Ethernet port. A big thank you to the Microsoft error dialog writers for that one.

In the end, I had no alternative: I had to resort to the time-honoured reboot. Even that didn’t work. Nor did rebooting the router. In fact, it was only when I called my dad and talked the problem through that he pointed out the error must be a software setting somewhere. This, I should shamefacedly admit, was after I’d swapped out the router and all the connecting cables.

It took me a princely 24 hours to solve the problem, and with a better diagnosis tool I reckon that would have been 24 seconds. Surely it’s not beyond the ken of Microsoft to build a tool that works out the two bits of a network that aren’t connecting as they should?

So am I just unlucky? Are other people out there having success with it?