Laptop wireless issue

joe123

Hey wondering if anyone can help here. A friends laptop has suddenly just stopped picking up any wireless connection. I had a look at it for them thinking it would be just a matter of reconnecting to their wireless but the wierd thing is its not even acknowledging their is wireless in the house.

My own laptop works fine and other devices can all pick up the wireless. Its like the laptop doesnt even have wireless (which it does as its only the last two days its stopped working.

Anyone have any idea what could be wrong with it? There was a wireless switch at the front and ive tried switching it both ways to see if that was the problem but still its picking nothing up.

Its a compaq presario f500. Im stumped. Would a virus cause a problem here as I know they rarely scan their laptop. Or is it just a hardware fault?

ricman

GO TO control panel,administration,system information, services, make sure wireless zero
configuration is on .see control panel,system,device manager, is the wireless card there, yellow logo=no device driver,or driver not loading properly.
you may need to reinstall the wifi card/device, device driver.

Freeman

Did you try:

1. Double-checking the WLAN Card Wires are fully engaged (requires removing plastic cover on bottom of laptop and re-attaching the two wires)
   
2. Swapping out the WLAN card with yours (take their card out and put it in yours and put your card in theirs, this tells you if their card is faulty or if the connectors on the motherboard are faulty)

This would at least narrow it down to a Hardware or Driver Issue or simply a bad connection. You can use this to see where/how to remove the WLAN card:

http://tim.id.au/laptops/hp/hp%20g6000%20compaq%20presario%20f500.pdf

A virus could disable the wireless but I would check for a Hardware/Driver/Bad connection fault first. You could also check the LAN connection by plugging in an ethernet cable to the router/modem and seeing if you have internet access. Like ricman said, you may have to reinstall the driver software but I would check the above first.

joe123

Il try both your suggestions. Ive already tried reseating the two wires on the wireless card but no luck.

After a bit of digging ive found that its a very common fault in certain hp laptops.

Bascially where the light at the front of the laptop with the wireless switch stays orange when it should be blue. Many theories going round about how to solve it but none have worked so far.

The wireless card isnt even registering in the device manager.

joe123

No luck with this. Seems to be a big problem in certain model.

Anyone know good plug in wireless adapters to work to pick up the wifi instead?