Unable to view browser login screen at hotels and libraries

Thanks to Tom for pointing me in the right direction. I had added a DNS entry due to some DNS issues a while back. Removing that solved the problem. Here's what Tom said:

A captive portal usually works with DHCP and DNS. So Google-DNS might not know the hostname of the captive portal, which leads to an error. No hostnames and DNS are involved when browsing to an IP-address; so this worked. Setting the wireless connection to DHCP(yeah, also DNS) should work. When you want to use another DNS in your home-network, you should consider setting it on the access-point or router and not your local connection. – Tom 2 days ago

In the START menu, type:

IPCONFIG /RELEASE

press enter and then type:

IPCONFIG /RENEW

Reload the page now and the issue should be resolved.

Viola.

Sometimes with corporate login screen that appear in your browser, you'll first have to navigate to some website like www.google.com or www.facebook.com. The hotel/library wireless service will intercept this request and present you the login screen.

Hope this helps. (I experienced this with my school login and also the public WiFi login in my place.)

Try browsing to the root url for the hotel gateway. Usually you will have a paper or other guide that includes the hotel name, etc, in a url that doesn't work. Example: SSID is EastsideCannery.rooms-cox (doesn't work manually) root here is cox.com Just enter cox.com and the gateway pops up. Also not all gateways are happy with all browsers. Keep a shortcut/alias for a browser in no-extension mode.