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Wireless internet just stopped working
Motzy5
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have a HP Pavillion laptop that is 3 years old and just today the wireless internet stopped working for some reason. The switch at the bottom shows a red light at both the "off" and "on" positions, and should show a blue light when it is on. The laptop is running on Vista and i am not sure what happened with it. In the network settings the only form of internet connection that is present is the normal wired one, no wireless. Any ideas??
Motzy5 on
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(Sorry for the double post)
It sounds to me like you need to reinstall the router. I actually had a similar problem with mine when I switched to Vista, but I can't remember how I fixed it.
If you call your ISP, they might be able to walk you through it.
Alternatively, scan for malware.
This changes absolutely nothing
Huh? I didn't realize the only thing NVIDIA makes is motherboards. In fact I've never heard of an NVIDIA motherboard but I'm not going to blindly assume they don't
...Huh?
It's not an ISP problem, the laptop simply isn't recognizing the NIC.
Nothing personal Chanus but your advice is a little uninformed
Edit: Also consider your NIC may be dead
Her new laptop arrived (from QVC, ugh) and had everything it claimed, but there was no way to get the wireless card to do... well... anything. It was like it wasn't connected. It took about an hour before I tried to find some sort of hardware issues. There was an odd switch, like a smaller version of the clasp that locks the laptop screen closed with the wireless symbol on it. I switched it, and poof. Wireless card turned on and everything was groovy.
Look around the base of the machine. Apparently, lot of newer laptops have a "Disable Wireless" switch around the base. On my Grandmother's laptop it was next to the headphone ports (which was really stupid). I'm not entirely sure why it was there, and It was the first one I had seen (though I discovered my Mother and Sister both had it on their new machines as well).
The laptops were two Lenovos and and a HP, respectively. My Dell does not have it, nor does my Lady's Macbook. Not sure what the deal with it is, but it might be your solution.
Unfortunately this is a common problem with HP laptops. I know of at least 2 people who've had the same problem you describe. The wireless just stops working and the LED stays red instead of indicating whether the laptop is wireless enabled or not. On my own HP laptop, I've had the CD/DVD Rom issue that mechaThor reports in his post.
For all the faults, we tried a number of software upgrades and whatnot, and did all the troubleshooting we could think of (by the way I have a degree in software engineering and can pretty much fix any PC fault) and we couldn't make it work again, short of getting HP to take the laptops back for repair.
I think the issue is that the wirless module on the laptop motherboard has gone faulty. A google search shows this to be a common problem.
Advice - Call HP, and ask them what they will do about it. Based on my own internet searches, and experiences with various friends' HP laptops, they will know about this issue.
FYI - the laptops we sent in for repair came back pretty quickly. I'm in the UK and the pickup procedure was flawless. A courier came to get the laptop each time.
NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller is a driver set for the on-board networking hardware that comes with the motherboard... and yes, NVIDIA makes motherboards now... or rather, they make components (I think my motherboard is an Asus, but has that Networking Controller driver set).
AFAIK HP tends to go to rather obscure 3rd party manufacturers to make some of the devices, of which many of them are rarely updated with new drivers, usually leading to problems like this. YMMV when sending it into HP for repair if you are in the US, though. I've had laptops that have taken up to a month to get returned, with some of the minor problems not resolved. I've heard (this works with other companies too, AFAIK) that telling them that you need to unit for a private business drastically speeds up the response and repair time, though this isn't coming from personal experience, strictly anecdotes from others. Good luck with whatever you end up doing, however.
Saying that you need it for business when you're calling customer support for a notebook marketed to the consumer market will get you an eye roll and 1 of 2 things: An empty promise or the truth.
It just isn't possible. The software that phone monkeys use to setup any sort of repairs is limited by the model of the computer and any extended warranties that apply to the computer.
Quite literally it's impossible to have repair expedited unless it has already been like a month and you are fortunate enough to have your case escalated.
BTW, the best way to get a case escalated is through corporate e-mails rather than requesting one with phone support.