Laptop refuses to find wifi signals

[djdrew201]

I've got a Gateway laptop Windows 7, and it was working fine until....famous start eh? Until all the sudden it refuses to find known good signals from my Centurylink WiFi router. Now I know those signals are good because I have 3 other computers that pick up the signal just fine. In my device manager it shows that the driver for the network onboard is doing fine, but still in my network manager, it shows NO networks to connect to. Now I worked an end run I thought, and installed a USB WiFi stick that I know is good by trying it on another computer before installing it on this bad one. It still shows no known networks in the area through the WiFi stick. The laptop was picking up signals just fine and it is only about 30 foot away in the bedroom and thin walls and was working okay before this problem.

Anybody got any ideas what all the sudden happened? I checked my internet connection settings in Google chrome even though this wouldn't affect anything in picking up network signals, and I have have checked my network settings also for the home-group but this is a problem with not even being able to detect any networks out there in the network manager.

Any tips would be appreciated and I found nothing to rely or pertaining to a similar problem on in a search here. I tried to be thorough her without being long-winded.

thanks in advance BTW

Drew

 

[Cabletek]

There are usually an on off switch around the edge AND/OR an FN Number key combo that turns the radio on or off. The only other thing is sometimes windows updates do stupid things like set the power saving modem when on battery to turn wireless off so it will show up when AC power is on but not when on battery.

 

[Fardringle]

If you get the same results with an external (and known working) Wifi adapter, that pretty much rules out a hardware problem. If you don't know exactly what might have been changed that caused the issue, I would try using System Restore to set the system back to a date before the problem started.

 

[djdrew201]

Now I feel like an idiot, for all the years I have been working on computers I had no clue there was a friggin' on/off switch on the thing. Just looked and it solved my problem, thanks so much. It was important to me as I stream my shows and such from the web, and on disability income can't afford Dish or Direct TV so this was my connection to the world, most people don't realize how hard it is on the elderly and disabled, so this was a ton of help. THanks all...Fardringle and Cabletek...good as gold folks,your good as gold.

 

[Fardringle]

Interesting. The switch shouldn't have had any effect on the USB adapter at all, but I'm glad it worked for you!

 

[JackMDS]

Interesting. The switch shouldn't have had any effect on the USB adapter at all, but I'm glad it worked for you!

+1

The switch is internal to the hardware and it is meant to save Battery if an Internal Wireless card is used.

I would check the configuration and make sure that there is No issue of Windows Native Wireless Manager running in tandem with the C**y Manger that most USB Wireless loads with the USB Drivers.

 

[Cabletek]

I have no idea about the wifi stick I just assumed that was a windows 7 driver issue or he did not disable the onboard wifi in device manger so windows was still trying to use the internal.