Wireshark not capturing packets?

Question

I am trying to use Wireshark, but for some reason it won't capture packets. I've used it once before and it worked just fine, so I can't understand why it's not working right now. The only thing I've done differently since last time was that I opened the command window and run it as administrator, but when I went to use Wireshark again I did run it as administrator as well.

I open Wireshark and it shows me all detectable interfaces, out of which the Wi-Fi I'm connected to shows activity. Same with an Ethernet connection and the loopback interface. I start my capture with no filtering and promiscuous mode on all interfaces. Despite my doing things with my browser (looking up stuff, including http activity) it won't show anything and I always end my capture with no packets despite waiting for a good minute.

Then, when I close the capture, the opening window of wireshark won't show activity on the previously busy interfaces.

I have no idea what's gone wrong and I can't find anything online that explains or solves my problem. I've tried deleting and re-installing Wireshark as well, but to no avail. Any idea?

Answer 1

I had the same issue. I was using it for the first time. As in the above answer by Ron Maupin, I didn't select an interface. When you start wireshark you see in the middle of the window a scrollable list of interfaces eth0, wlan0 etc. Choose whichever you want to monitor and click on start (capture). Or there is wheel button - configure capture - which will pop up a window where you can choose the interface and press start.