For no reason I could think of, one of our Vizio TVs started having lots of problems connecting to the Wi-Fi. Even after a Factory Reset I couldn’t get things like Netflix to work, though I was able to reconnect to Wi-Fi and successfully test the connection.
Looking around on the internet wasn’t a lot of help, but there were two sets of things I founds that were useful… collected here to save someone pain.
First Try
- Go to Help and choose Factory Reset
- Power down the TV
- Disconnect the TV from power (I did this over night… I’ve see as low as one minute recommended, but that seems too little)
- Reconnect the TV to power and turn on
- Help > Factory Reset again
That restored my ability to connect via Wi-Fi, but widgets still didn’t work, telling me to choose the HDTV Settings widget and set up my connection (which was already set up and working… BAH).
Second Try
- Power down TV
- Connect TV to you network via wires (for me this meant unplugging everything from the TV and carrying it downstairs next to my router)
- Turn on TV
- Assuming your network is working, the TV should start a bunch of downloads and updates
- When everything seems done, power down
- Reconnect everything and power up the TV
You should be able to connect via Wi-Fi and run things like Netflix now.
If this didn’t help, the Yahoo Widget Developer forum had the best information. (Those little apps on your TV are Yahoo Widgets.)