Why do I have to restart my Dell laptop to reconnect to the internet?

[Dell Inc.]

Hi Casey,
My name is Krishna and I work for the Social Media and Community Team at Dell. The solution might be as simple as updating the wireless drivers. The wifi drivers might be out of date and not accommodating the wireless router setting particularly if it's secured with WPA or WPA2. So that should correct this issue. You can hard-wire your machine and download the latest drivers from http://www.support.dell.com/

Also, try running the automated network troubleshooter and see if it helps. These troubleshooters aren't designed to fix every problem, but they're a useful tool to try because they can often save you time and effort. To open the Network troubleshooter, Right-click the network icon or in the notification area of your taskbar, and then click Troubleshoot problems.

Regards,
Dell-Kris K
Dell Social Media and Communities