Trouble connecting to Hotspot WiFi

[JanetBiggar]

I posted an issue with this laptop and WiFi in "other" under the heading "Laptop running LL 3.8 acting unusually".  I believe I have narrowed things down a bit.  The youth who was using it found that he started to have issues with it connecting to the internet which would always have been via a WiFi hotspot from his phone AND more recently from my WiFi hotspot (which is a ZTE model #: MF920V which connects to 2G/3G/4G LTE mobile networks). At that original time of posting I had assumed it was with all WiFi connections, however once I took it home and checked it out further I realized it was just with this hotspot (which uses a data SIM card). I wondered at first if it was connected to the SIM, however my other dinosaur laptops have no issue connecting to this hotspot & SIM.

RESULTS of inxi -n command connected when connect to and using my home router to which this laptop recognizes and connects without problem:
administrator@administrator-Inspiron-1720:~$ inxi -n
Network:  Card-1: Broadcom and subsidiaries BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX driver: b44
          IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:1c:23:a3:4c:d6
          Card-2: Broadcom and subsidiaries BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n driver: wl
          IF: wlp12s0 state: up mac: 00:1c:26:ac:e9:c1

When I disconnect from the home router and connect to my hot spot today it is now "seeing" and connecting to the WiFi, however when I try to pull up a page such as facebook in the lower left corner of the page where you usually see the searching process/connecting process going on (goes through various things like "waiting for...","performing handshake...", "transferring..." NONE of this occurs and after a short period I get a message saying "Server not found".

I put in the inxi -n command again when connected to my hotspot and it looks like I am getting the same output(maybe this is expected, but since I am a newbie I wasn't sure if maybe it'd be different depending on the WiFi being used...):

administrator@administrator-Inspiron-1720:~$ inxi -n
Network:  Card-1: Broadcom and subsidiaries BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX driver: b44
          IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:1c:23:a3:4c:d6
          Card-2: Broadcom and subsidiaries BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n driver: wl
          IF: wlp12s0 state: up mac: 00:1c:26:ac:e9:c1


I'm unsure what other information I should be getting and providing.  While I have another laptop ready for this youth to use I would like to be able to make this one work so that he or another youth can access the internet via their phone hotspot.

Might anyone have suggestions about what is going on or what other information I should be providing?

[JanetBiggar]

So if this helps here is a bit more info:

1) When I put in a wireless USB (Panda) then it will connect and WORK to search the internet with my ZTE hotspot no problem.
2) When I put the ZTE's data SIM card into another android phone (an older Samsung) it ALSO works to connect and search the internet.
3) When I put a different carrier's data SIM into the ZTE hotspot it acts the same way as the original ZTE's SIM - it appears to see it, asks for a password.  Pulls up my home page, but none of the waiting, handshake, transfer stuff and eventually "server not found".

So it appears that for some reason THIS particular laptop (Dell Inspiron 1720) no longer will connect to the ZTE hotspot even though in the past this was not an issue.  From what the youth told me it would also seem that it stopped connecting to whatever phone he was using to hotspot from...

At this point the plan is to try this laptop tomorrow with his phone as a hotspot and if it still doesn't work then try it with the wireless USB and his phone hotspot and if that fails I have another laptop set up for him while I continue to trouble shoot this one 

Nonetheless if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.