Wi-Fi & connectivity

[OzzieMike]

My brother purchased a Roku Ultra yesterday and it can't connect to their WiFi network.

Their network name is Sally's WiFi, but the network name that's shown in the Roku setup is Sally\xe2\x80\x99s. Typing their network password doesn't work.

They have a Deco X25 mesh router that supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. All other devices in their house connect to the network just fine. (And no...I don't believe this router allows the different bands to be separated with different network names).

They have updated their router's firmware and restarted it several times, but nothing seems to work...it's always the same strange network name that appears in the Roku setup, and it won't connect.

Not being able to connect to WiFi doesn't allow them to even see if there's an update for their Roku.

Can anyone here offer any suggestions?

[Strega]

\xe2\x80\x99 is the UTF-8 sequence for the right single quote – which is not the same as the ' (apostrophe) key on a keyboard. For example if I type the ' key twice in a text editor, I get '', but if I type it twice in a word processor, the word processor's "smart quotes" feature replaces '' (two apostrophes) with ‘’ (left and right single quotes).

I'm thinking that for "Sally's", the apostrophe was meant, but it might have been typed into a word processor and pasted into the router????

Should the Roku still be able to connect to that?  Um... maybe???  However, I have seen variances in how Wi-Fi devices react to "special characters" in SSIDs and passphrases, so I have avoided them for years.

[Strega]

Of course, if anything like that crept into the passphrase, then that would be even worse.

[OzzieMike]

Thanks for your quick reply. No, when the WiFi network was set up, the network name was entered on his phone in the Deco router app, so it wasn't pasted in from a word processor.

[OzzieMike]

I suppose I could ask him if he'd consider changing their network name to something without any special characters.

(Not sure he's "up" for that, as he's easily "lost" when it comes to anything tech).😀

[OzzieMike]

I forgot I meant to add another tidbit here...

My brother tried to use the Roku site to get help (via chat seems to be the only option there). But when he was entering everything the site asked for when navigating thru (age, date of birth, etc.), he stopped when it asked for his credit card number. I told him this was smart, as I can think of no reason they'd need his credit card number to contact tech support chat for a brand new Roku Ultra).

[Strega]

Has he created an account yet?  Many paths through the support website will ask you to sign in or create an account.  It sounds like he went down the create an account path.  (Of course, I’m assuming he was on roku.com to begin with, because there are “fake support” sites out there.)

When creating an account, they do ask for a credit card number for subscriptions.  That can be avoided if you really don't want to.  When I signed up, you could avoid the whole CC business by starting here:

https://my.roku.com/signup/nocc

I assume that still works.

[OzzieMike]

Yes...he was on the roku.com site. I've forwarded your suggestion to him regarding creating an account.

Thank you.

[OzzieMike]

LOL...as I suspected he might....he's going to return the Roku.  (I know...that's the EASY way out!).