On several occasions, I had trouble connecting my pc to public hotspots. You know the drill: set up a wireless connection to the hotel wifi network, surf to any site and it should bring you to a page where you need to pay to much money 🙂
Only, on my pc it did not do that. It would try to load the page forever.
But finally, I found the solution. If you have VMware on your pc, or any other software that adds “virtual” network adapters: go to Network Neighborhood and disable all network adapters except the one you use to connect to the hotel network. Magic, it works!