IP Address not showing for pi 3 on laptop

Question

I have just started using my Raspberry Pi 3 and I enjoyed using it for about 2-3 days. I had used "Remote Desktop Connection" on my Windows 10 Laptop.
I entered my IP address for my raspberry pi. The IP address was obtained using Angry IP Scanner where it showed raspi as a host.

I do not know for what reason but suddenly my raspberry stopped connecting to the remote desktop so I headed over to the scanner thinking a new address must have been assigned. Although now it shows no host.

So I tried

• Checking for any loose connections. Resetting the power supply again and again

• Installed Advanced IP Scanner, and scanned it again, with no results

• Installed dhcpsrv.exe, where I created an ini file and then ran the server but in the clients it doesn't show any raspberry pi.

And none of these methods worked. I have absolutely no idea as to what the problem is. Please someone could just explain to me as to what is happening.

Answer 1

For now, if your RPi cannot connect wirelessly, you may want to connect it to your computer via Ethernet and try a few things.

For 1) the default hostname for RPi is “raspberrypi“, but if that's not coming up there are some things you can do to refresh the hostname:

In the terminal type:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

and then your hosts file should appear looking like so:

then type

sudo nano /etc/hostname

and this file will obtain only your current hostname. Here is where you can change the hostname or create one.

Next, type these two commands:

sudo /etc/init.d/hostname.sh

and then

sudo reboot

2) If you are unsure if your RPi is on the network, you can type the command (on Windows, this time, not on the RPi):

arp /a

This will bring up the ARP table where you will see all the devices (and their IP Addresses) on your network.

This command is definitely more functional (and practical) than using software like Angry IP Scanner or Advanced IP Scanner.

Best of luck to you on your RPi journey xx

Answer 2

There are a few different methods you can use to troubleshoot this.

1) Router Setup The simplest way to solve this issue is to open up your router config. Based on your model and brand, you can check their help sections on how to do this.

On most home networks, this will be 192.168.1.1 which is also known as your gateway. If you have a doubt, you can check in your windows network settings.

You can open up your browser of choice and type in this gateway IP address and it will give you a login page. Again, check your specific brand of router and use the default login details.

Most modern routers have a DHCP list where you can check all the devices connected to your system. If your Pi is successfully connected to the network, it will more likely than not show up here. If you share your router brand and model, we can give you more specific help on where exactly to look.

2) Direct Connect

If you have a display, keyboard and a mouse available, you can try booting the pi up with these connected. Once you are in, open up a terminal and type the following command:

ifconfig eth0

You should get a response like this:

Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
**inet addr:192.168.1.xx**  Bcast:192.168.1.xx  Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: xxxx::xxxx:xx:x:xxx/xx Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
RX packets:2895365 errors:0 dropped:6 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6180589 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:136456331 (130.1 MiB)  TX bytes:263301601 (251.1 MiB)

Note the second line following the inet addr: field. This would be the IPV4 address that your Pi has assigned based on DHCP.

You can also type the command hostname in your terminal and find your hostname

If your IP address does not show up here, you need to configure your network correctly in the /etc/network/interfaces file which is beyond the scope of this question.

If you can post the details of your test with these two methods, we can help you more.