Fix Wi-Fi 'Connected, No Internet' Gateway 0.0.0.0

Quick answer: A default gateway of 0.0.0.0 means your PC never received a valid IP lease from the router, so open an elevated Command Prompt and run ipconfig /release, then ipconfig /renew, and reboot the router if that doesn't work.

You're sitting at your desk, the Wi-Fi icon in the taskbar is full bars, and Windows cheerfully tells you it's "Connected, no internet." You open Command Prompt, run ipconfig, and see this under your wireless adapter:

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 169.254.87.14
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 0.0.0.0

That 169.254.x.x address is called APIPA (Automatic Private IP Addressing). Windows hands it to itself when the DHCP server doesn't answer. And 0.0.0.0 as a gateway means there's literally no route off your local network. Your laptop is talking to itself in an empty room. Nothing is routing anywhere.

The reason this happens 9 times out of 10 is that your router either stopped handing out DHCP leases, its DHCP pool ran dry, or the wireless adapter's driver got wedged after a sleep/wake cycle. I've seen this on Intel AX200 cards after Windows 11 22H2 updates more times than I can count, and on Realtek RTL8822BE chips in Lenovo IdeaPads after the machine wakes from modern standby.

Here's the order to fix it in. Don't skip steps because they seem obvious. I've watched smart people waste an hour by jumping straight to a Windows reinstall.

Step-by-step fix

Confirm the gateway really is 0.0.0.0. Open Command Prompt as administrator (right-click Start, pick Terminal (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin)). Run:
```
ipconfig /all
```
Scroll to your wireless adapter (not Ethernet, not Bluetooth). You should see Default Gateway . . . : 0.0.0.0 or a blank line. If the gateway is something like 192.168.1.1 but you still have no internet, this isn't your problem — stop here and check DNS instead.
Release and renew the DHCP lease. Still in the admin prompt, run these two commands back-to-back:
```
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
```
Watch the output. A healthy renew takes about 2–4 seconds and prints a new IPv4 address on your subnet (something like 192.168.1.42). If you see "An error occurred while renewing interface Wi-Fi : unable to contact your DHCP server," that's your answer — the router isn't answering. Move to step 3.
Flush DNS and reset the TCP/IP stack. Even when DHCP is broken, a stale ARP cache or corrupted Winsock entry can block the renew from succeeding. Run:
```
ipconfig /flushdns
netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
```
After the winsock reset you'll be told to reboot. Do it — don't just close the window. On the reboot, check ipconfig again. If the gateway is still 0.0.0.0, move on.
Forget and rejoin the Wi-Fi network. Windows caches the SSID profile including any static IP settings you may have set months ago and forgotten about. Click the Wi-Fi icon, right-click your network, choose Forget. Then reconnect and enter the password fresh. If someone set a static IP on this adapter and then changed networks, that's exactly what produces a 0.0.0.0 gateway — the static config has no valid router.
Check for a static IP assignment. Go to Settings → Network & Internet → Wi-Fi → your network → IP assignment. It should say Automatic (DHCP). If it says Manual, that's your bug. Flip it to Automatic, save, and run ipconfig /renew again. You should now see a real gateway address.
Update or roll back the wireless driver. Press Win+X, open Device Manager, expand Network adapters, right-click your Wi-Fi adapter, and check Properties → Driver. Note the version. Intel AX200/AX201 drivers below 22.80.0 have a known DHCP lease bug after resume. Grab the current driver from Intel's site (or Realtek's, for Realtek chips). If you just updated and the problem started, use Roll Back Driver instead.
Power-cycle the router the right way. Unplug the router's power, wait a full 60 seconds, plug it back in. Wait for the lights to stabilize (usually 90 seconds). Then run ipconfig /renew on your PC one more time. A full minute of being unplugged drains the capacitor and clears the DHCP lease table — 10 seconds won't do it.

After step 7, you should see an IPv4 address on the same subnet as your router, a default gateway like 192.168.1.1, and a working internet connection. If ping 8.8.8.8 succeeds, you're done.

If the main fix doesn't work

The router's DHCP pool is exhausted

This happens a lot in dense apartments or offices. Log into your router's admin page (usually 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1), find the DHCP settings, and look at the lease table. If you see 50/50 leases used with a pool of 50, that's it. Shrink the lease time from 24 hours to 2 hours, or widen the pool to .100–.250. Reboot the router and try again.

The 2.4 GHz band is fine but 5 GHz is broken

Some routers (looking at you, older ASUS models) drop the 5 GHz radio's DHCP relay after firmware updates. Split your SSIDs so 2.4 and 5 GHz have different names, then connect only to 2.4 GHz. If that works, flash the router firmware.

Static DNS isn't the fix

Skip the advice to set DNS to 8.8.8.8. If your gateway is 0.0.0.0, DNS is irrelevant — you have no route to any DNS server. Fix the gateway first.

Windows fast startup is interfering

Fast Startup leaves the network adapter in a half-initialized state on shutdown. Disable it: Control Panel → Power Options → Choose what the power buttons do → Change settings that are currently unavailable → uncheck Turn on fast startup. Reboot fully.

Prevention

Set your router's DHCP lease time to no more than 12 hours if you have more than 20 devices. Reserve a static IP for your PC's MAC address in the router's DHCP reservation table so you never depend on the pool being free. And keep your wireless driver within two versions of current — Intel and Realtek both publish changelogs, and DHCP-after-sleep bugs show up constantly. If you travel with a laptop, create a Restore Point before any Windows feature update; the 22H2 and 23H2 updates both broke Wi-Fi DHCP for specific Realtek chips until a driver patch landed weeks later.