Heres the deal, my girlfriend's laptop was working fine last night. This morning the wireless simply cannot be detected, the wireless card does not show up under the hardware detection in windows or on a ubuntu live cd. There is a switch that allows you to turn the wireless on and off. The light indicates it is always off not matter what way the switch is flipped. I am assuming this is a hardware problem and will need to be fixed but thought Id ask here first. Thanks for the help

7/19/2008 12:26:48 PM

go to a friend's house and see if your computer will work on their wireless network first.

7/19/2008 12:48:16 PM

I have lots of wireless access pts around me, that not the problem. Getting the hardware to show up in windows is whats getting me.

[Edited on July 19, 2008 at 1:33 PM. Reason : a]

7/19/2008 1:33:33 PM

The wireless card may have come unseated in your laptop. But if the laptop is under warranty you do not want to open it up.

7/23/2008 10:29:54 PM

One of the "f" keys should have a picture of either a box (monitor) with waves/curves coming out of it or a picture of an antenae with waves/curves coming out of it. Hit the "fn" key + the f# key that's got one of those symbols on it.

Yes, many laptops have 2 or more ways to turn off the wireless and they all have to be set to "on" for it to work. I would also check out the hardware manager through the windows control panel. If you see something with an exclamation by it and it says "network adapter" or something like that, then windows is having issues recognizing and using it. Might be worth uninstalling it in that list and telling the system to "Detect new hardware." If it's a corrupted driver that might fix it.

Is it a ThinkPad?

7/24/2008 2:20:50 AM

Thanks for the help guys, after a bit of research, it seems my gfs computer is part of a big recall from hp. It seems StayPuff was right and they will have to replace the motherboard. Thanks for the help though.

7/24/2008 7:21:01 AM