HP laptop will not connect to wifi

theteal

Morning folks, i've had a bit of a search in vain for similar threads so i'll share my plight afresh.

I've an HP tx2520 laptop approx 18 months. All was fine up until a month or so ago when the BIOS just decided to stop seeing the HDD. Long story short, i sent it back in to be fixed under the additionally purchased coverplan - by the looks of it, they just replaced the HDD (i'm pretty sure the BIOS was the source of the problem and had this theory backed up by a friend who works for laptop lab). OK, received it back, all seemed fine.

Within that week I was using the machine in the gf's house and again, everything was fine initially - network set up and managed by myself, dlink router, wpa2, mac filter, she doesn't know any of the passwords (nor wants to). Anyway, after a boot up of my machine, I notice that the connection icon in the tray has a red X on it and then flicks to a grey signal bars icon and back again. I right-click the icon and access the connection manager. The network appears in the available list, i click on it, it starts to connect but stops after maybe 1-2 seconds with a connection error and a troubleshooting option - which was/is pretty useless. I checked all network settings, nothing had changed. I checked the network using other devices, no problems there. I thought hardware fault but said i'd check it on my own home network before jumping to conclusions - similar router, configured the exact same way as above.

Before I actually got a chance to try it at home, I just happened to bump into my laptop lab friend and i tried to use it on his network. Again, saw the network but would not connect - getting concerned now. His attitude was, "ah it's a HP, problems are pobably to be expected" and continued to explain to me how the fan was in such a bad position combined with how unbareably hot it can get was gonna be the cause of more heartache.

Anyway, I got it home and viola, it worked fine That's a bit weird I thought but I was happy enough that it was working that I wrote the problems of the previous day off as an anomaly.

Now, I've been in the gf's since last Friday. The machine has been connecting fine since I arrived until yesterday evening. The exact same thing has happend - it can see the available network but will not connect to it. Again I have edited no settings and the network is working fine for other devices. It was working earlier yesterday, I turned on the machine yesterday evening and now no connection. I'm now convinced it's a hardware problem.

I've searched online and the main thing that looks similar is this. It's an AMD processor running Vista as described in the article but is a much newer model than those mentioned in that 3 year old article.

So can any of you wise people shed any light to aid my situation? Anybody familiar with such issues? Does anybody know of any quick solutions? Is my friend's scepticism of HP laptops warranted?

It's still covered under the purchased coverplan but given the intermittant nature of the fault, i'm half expected to receive it back with a "no fault found" note attached. This issue never transpired before it was sent for repair last month.

Apologies for the long-winded yarn. I do realise this would probably be more suited to be posted in a HP support forum but tbh I would respect a boards opinion a fair bit more.