[Howto] fix “Windows was unable to find a certificate to log you on…”
Normally connecting Windows XP to a wireless router is a pretty easy venture. However, I’ve stumbled upon this problem a couple of times and it can be very frustrating.
The Problem:
When this problem occurs the client machine will attempt to connect to the wireless router and fail. You see a popup that tells you, “Windows was unable to find a certificate to log you on to the network {name of wireless router}.”
The Solution:
This issue is almost always caused by the WPA Shared Key field on the router being left blank, or the data in the field is corrupt.
To fix this issue I logged into my router and made sure that I keyed in passphrase. I also went back in after saving just to make sure it stuck.
If your router already had a valid passphrase in place then you might be dealing with some sort of corruption. Try changed the security type from WPA to WEP. Then change it back to WPA and re-enter your passphrase. Lastly if that doesn’t fix the issue you might have to do a total reset on the router and re-enter your settings from scratch.
Good Luck,
Mac