laptop wifi dead

[smackaholic]

My HP laptop wifi decided to just stop working. The little wireless icon thingy at the bottom of the screen is gone. The wifi switch is turned on, but the light is amber rather than blue. When I go into control panel and click on the wireless assistant thing, nothing opens.

It's as if everything to do with wifi has been deleted.

WTF?

I'd bring it back to compusa, who I still have a service contract with, but, they kind of don't exist anymore. Actually, they do still exist, but, no stores within a thousand miles or so. And I really would hate to have to ship this fuggin thing.

When I plug in my dsl cable, it works fine.

[peter dragon]

what kind of op-system are you using? Vista or XP? is the wireless port enabled?
Vista go to control panel network icon, manage networks (right hand side) and then check to see if the wireless icon is enabled.

XP its control panel netork connections check icon.

good luck...

[smackaholic]

pete,

I have XP. I'll give it a shot when I get home.

thanks

[smackaholic]

Looked in control panel (again) and I can't even find the danged wireless icon.

I would think that even if the wireless card or port or whateverthefukk it is that makes the wireless work, decided to shit the bed, I would stil have the icon, wouldn't I?

On the day this thing shit the bed, my 9 year old son asked, "can I log on with the admin account to download a game"? I was a little hesitant, but, I said go ahead as he usually goes to someplace relatively harmless like nic.com.

Could some dickhead have hacked into this thing when he was on line and deleted the wireless connection?

[peter dragon]

go to control panel click network connections.. the should be a couple of icons one should be the wireless connection. right click enable..

[ElTaco]

I would say it sounds like a number of things could have happened:

Wifi access is disabled: To check, go to control panel, open Network Connections and look for the wifi card. If it is there, but not at the bottom of of the screen, it could be disabled (which should be signified with a red X. If the card is not there (you'll only see your wired port/card) then...

Driver is corrupt or the card is dead.

To check go to the Control Panel, and open the System Properties, then click on the Hardware tab and select the Device Manager. Under Network Adapters, you should see your wireless card. Mine says 'Dell Wireless 1490 Dual Band Wlan mini-card for example but it will be a different card, such as an Intel one, which is fairly popular with laptops as well.

If the card is there without a Red X or a yellow triangle, that means that the hardware is working, but you might consider downloading the latest driver from HP's website for your laptop and re-installing it. If there is a Red X, it could still be disabled or broken/not working. My sound is dead atm and it has a red X for example. If you reinstall the driver and still can't get it to work, I'd call HP and they should be able to help. Finally, mailing it in may be the only final solution if its busted. It shouldn't take much more then 1 week to get it back.

If you mail it in, you should ask if you can remove the HD and back it up for sure either way.

[BSmack]

If you mail it in, you should ask if you can remove the HD and back it up for sure either way.

I'd make an bootable iso of the drive and store the data to an external drive before mailing anything in.

[atomicdad]

This might be a little simplistic, but is there a little switch either on the side or back of your HP that turns on-off the Wi-Fi. My Dell has one, and a few months back my kid switched it off for whatever reason. It took me a couple of hours to figure out what the little knuckehead had done.

[ElTaco]

He did say in his original post that the wifi-switch is on. Another option is the FN-Key with the F2 key I think or F8 or some other Function key at the top. Usually has a little antenna with signals coming out of it that also disables wifi.

[atomicdad]

Oh
nevermind.


Not a good start for my first post in a couple of months

[mouse]

Any updates ?

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

mouse? No fucking way...

[Dinsdale]

Any updates ?

Yeah... if you want to minimize your risk of your WiFi, then subsequently every other ethernet adapter you have quitting working...

I'd suggest avoiding Vista.

I didn't realize dead network adapters were an epidemic with Vista, and now even M$ is beginning to begrudging admit it... it must be bad if the Evil Ones admit there may be a problem.

[Mister Bushice]

Those same evil ones have also discontinued production on windows XP, one of their most stable products.

That makes good sense

Fuck. My next box is going to be as disconnected from MS products as possible.

Microshit will be releasing a "New" Version of the same old thing next year, I heard.