I cannot connect to my university's wi-fi. I was once able to connect and I have no idea why I cannot anymore.

Also, more strangely, my "Internet connections" menu always has "Free Public Wi-fi" and "hpsetup." These supposed wi-fi connections are always there, even when I am in entirely different cities or on the freeway. And there are single dots above and below signal strength.

Is there like some way to reset the wifi or something? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated

The HPSetup and Free Public WiFi are Ad-Hoc networks (that's what the dot above the normal WiFi symbol means). An ad-hoc network is a wireless network that one computer projects out so that other computers can connect to it. Basically, if a computer has a wireless network card, it can function as a router instead of as a connecting client. This can let you set up networks for WLAN games, move files from computer to computer, etc, when you can't connect them easily. It also lets you share internet. So if your computer is getting internet from a 3G/4G modem, ethernet cord, or something else, you can then set up internet forwarding/sharing to any other connection it has, such as an adhoc network it's broadcasting, so that other devices that connect to your computer by wifi can get internet through it. Sorta like when people tether their laptops to their 3G smartphones to get internet to the computer through the phone, but in the reverse direction.

Now, the hpsetup ones are indicative of HP computers for whom the owner never bothered to clean-reinstall the OS when buying the computers (presumably laptops) or even bothered to uninstall all the bloatware - which makes sense if you're on a college campus. (By the way, I would recommend doing that with every computer you ever buy, because it makes getting rid of bloatware so much easier, and keeps you somewhat sharp on the OS installing skill, which is valuable. But I digress...)

The "Free Public WiFi" ad-hoc networks confuse me more... I thought my campus may have been doing something with WiFi repeaters or something else and they were coming up as ad-hoc networks when I first saw one, but I didn't trust it at first, and the few times I did try to connect to one I never got anywhere. Honestly, I don't know what this "Free Public WiFi" ad-hoc network thing is. It's so randomly common on campus nowadays that my current suspicious is that there's either a virus going around, or some "feature" (hidden or not) in some popular-among-college-students program makes the computer automatically create an ad-hoc network. Since I doubt this is about altruism and free internet for all, I suspect it may be something malicious or annoying-at-best.

I would look that up (I intend to too, but I might not get to it for a bit). If you're feeling like getting into hacking you can see if you can take advantage of these adhoc networks to hack the computers of the people who leave them on... I don't encourage you do anything unethical in the process, but just noting they might make good targets (though I lack the hacking skills to know for sure how exploitable the hpsetup and Free Public WiFi adhocs are by default - average college student's computer though, with default out-of-store configuration?).

Anyway: For whatever reason on the N900, sometimes ad-hoc networks don't go away from your available network list, even if that network isn't within range of your N900. Especially if you've tried to or have connected to those networks already. Rebooting might solve it - typically I go into Settings, "Internet connections", press the connections button, and delete them manually from there. Just don't reconnect to those adhoc networks again (you won't get internet from them normally anyway), or delete them from the connections list manually again every time they get left over in the available connections list.

As for being unable to connect to your university's WiFi, what steps do you take to connect, what exactly does the N900 display when you try to connect, and what do you do after you've connected/tried-to-connect? Does your university redirect you to a webpage that asks for your student nickname/id and password to be able to use the campus wifi? What do you remember installing or updating since you last were able to connect?

"Free Public WiFi"? Not!

Okay. Thanks. Looking through that article and some of the links in it, that makes perfect sense. Someone probably could find a way to make this hackable, namely, since most of these ad-hoc networks are computers sending out requests for a response from what it believes to the the computer offering that ad-hoc network (this may explain the hpsetup ones too), it is probably possible to have your own ad-hoc network named that, and then all of these computers could go and try to connect to yours. And then you can see if you can get in through it.

So this is possibly exploitable - but I wouldn't worry about it as an end user... too much.... yet. I'm sure someone will try to take advantage of it eventually, though.

Or just turn off your WiFi connection when on the move. Who needs WiFi in a plane, for instance...? Not to mention: it saves valuable battery power...

Thanks for all of the responses, people.

@Mentalist Traceur
Absolutely fantastic response. I appreciate it. Anyway, to answer your questions, I connected 1 time total and it worked flawlessly (during freshmen orientation) and when I came back a few weeks later at the beginning of the semester, it would not connect. To clarIify, the wi-fi doesn't even show up anymore. I installed many apps, mostly -extras but some -devel as well. I cannot remember what I downloaded exactly, do you suggest that I uninstall recent ones until the bug is gone?

Hmmm... Do you have a laptop or something else you could check wifi availability with? Does anyone else you know or notice get the campus WiFi in the same spots where it doesn't show up for your N900?

My first recommendation would be to check that - if other people are easily detecting the WiFi where you aren't, then it's probably an issue with your device. If not, then it's possible for whatever reason, the campus WiFi is just generally sucking or is down temporarily or some such. From there, I would send an email or make a call or drop by the office of, the department in your university that has to do with WiFi. See if they're having any problems.

If not, and you really want to be sure (though up to you, this might be out-of-the-way) go to the spot you got WiFi during student orientation, make sure you have power-saving off (it's in the connection settings, when you get to the list of saved connections, select the campus WiFi one and press edit, hit next until you get to the last one, and press Advanced. Power saving and transmission power are under the Other tab. Sometimes, in some of the classrooms, I have to take power saving off completely to get the N900 to stay on the WiFi consistently. It's not ideal for battery life, but it should last you through a class, or two on a full charge, depending on what you're doing and what you have running/installed). If, power saving off and in the same area you got WiFi before, you still don't get it, and you already know that the campus WiFi is actually up and running, then you are almost guaranteed that the problem is entirely with your device. As for transmission power, I always use the 100 mw (or whatever the measurement unit is) one, not the 10 mw one. I don't really think it impacts power enough to warrant keeping it lower unless you're guaranteed to be right next to the router.

Now, from there, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure where to proceed. On thing I will say is on my campus, in a lot of places, WiFi is patchy, and in others, it's there but the N900 is somewhat lacking in sheer power to blast through the WiFi noise people's laptops create, so it will not pick up the wifi or it will pick it up, lose it, pick it up, lose it, etc. I've had two classes so far where part of my semester is spent fishing for a good WiFi spot in the classroom.

I suspect something like WiFi Eye would be a useful tool for seeing if there's actual WiFi networks around, and what they are (Though I myself don't use WiFi Eye, so I can't vouch for it's usefulness for this purpose).

I suppose if none of the above helps, and no one else more N900-workings-savvy pipes up with technical advice, you can see if uninstalling apps one by one helps. (By the way, you never need to remember what you have installed - when you go to the app manager's uninstall menu, it will naturally list everything you have installed.) That said, I would start with any network-specific or WiFi-specific programs/apps you have. Mostly a reboot after every uninstall should get you a clean slate. Some apps leave stuff behind when uninstalled, which sometimes still run in the background... if that's the case you usually only find out if you dig up the bug-reports/threads for that app. Up to you if you want to look up the apps you suspect in advance or if you want to uninstall everything one-by-one and then look up possible apps if your problem doesn't go away.

You can also open X-Term and type the word "top" and press enter to see what processes are running and eating up the most memory or CPU at any time and copy those outputs here. Might not answer your problem, but if you do it every once in a while when you are trying to connect to the WiFi, you may be able to find something suspicious that clues us in to what the problem is.

- Edit -

If you're not picking up ANY WiFi networks (including any new Free Public WiFi and hp setup adhocs after you've cleaned out your connections list of them, or any other networks you know exist you may want to check against), it's possible your N900 has it's WiFi modem completely off... I'm not sure why this would happen... Perhaps you (without noticing, or for some other purpose) or some program shut it down. I'd if that's the case, you can try running "ifup wlan0" in X-Term. I'm not sure if you have to be root... if you do, you can easily become root by just typing in "root" or "sudo gainroot" first (assuming you have rootsh installed).

Also, possibly stupid question and you most likely already checked for stuff like this, but just in case: Is there a possibility your N900 got set to Offline Mode? (Offline mode button is accessed by pressing the power key briefly. It's one of the options on the menu that pops out. You may have either pressed it accidentally or something may have set it to offline mode without you noticing.) If offline mode is activated, the button you're looking for would say "Normal Mode". By default the symbol next to that next is five horizontal bars on top of each other - like the signal bars, but a bigger image thereof - but if you're using a custom theme it might use different pictures.

Thanks so much again for the in-depth response. And for all of the great suggestions.

Now for the info: It's not in offline mode, I can connect to wi-fi perfectly at my house, friend's house, etc. I have asked peers around me in nearly every building (including where freshmen orientation was held) and they all had full strength campus wi-fi where my n900 showed nothing.

As for the power saving mode thing, I will try that tomorrow and report my findings. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to start uninstalling things, huh? It doesn't look like I have much choice.

I deleted hpsetup and Free Public Wi-fi with ease. Thanks for the heads up on how to delete them.

Today, I turned off power saving mode for my university wi-fi. I also went back to the same location where freshmen orientation took place and made sure others around me had wi-fi. And I still didn't get anything. And I made sure it was on 100 mw like you said.
Also, I uninstalled a bunch of recent apps and rebooted a few times and still nothing.

My wi-fi and everything else appears to be in perfect, working order and I tried a bunch of things and still, I cannot connect to my college's wi-fi.
I also installed Wi-fi Eye and that doesn't pick up on the university wi-fi.

Could it perhaps be titan's overclock kernel? Should I delete the college's wi-fi entry from the "Internet Connections" in the settings menu and then try searching for it?

If don't see university WiFi then it is mostl likely - no signal anymore - fault router.

Or your N900 now switched to another country which have a slightly different set of WiFi channels (some channels - college channels - are prohibited).

try to reboot at home - N900 may pickup your country code based on your home WiFi. Or do it in college.