- Aug 25, 2001
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I have two of these little beasties. They've (mostly) held up pretty well the last few years, but one of them, it crashed, and then the wifi wouldn't work, and for a while, wouldn't even be detected.
Well, after a reboot, it showed up in Device Manager (Win7 Pro pre-loaded), with (I think) a Code 37 or 39 or something, it mentioned that the device couldn't initialize, due to BIOS / Firmware issues.
The factory M.2 PCI-E wifi card is a RealTek, 82373E or something like that. I bought a pair of them on ebay off of a Chinese vendor for under $4 ea. (I was looking to upgrade, but settled on the same card as the factory OEM, thinking compatibility would be better.)
Anyways, I didn't need to replace the card.
What I did was, re-flash the system firmware. And... VIOLA! It fixed the wifi. Reboot Windows 7, now it showed the familiar antenna bars, and the yellow globe, ready to select a wifi network.
Before, it showed the network monitor icon, with a red X through it.
I'm posting this thread for completeness, in case someone in the future might run into a similar problem.
Seems kind of bizarre to me, though, not sure how BIOS/UEFI got corrupted, or even how it didn't error at POST if BIOS/UEFI was corrupted. Maybe it was just that the CMOS settings got reset, when it was flashed? I don't know, I tried removing the battery. (Both the laptop battery, and the coin cell.)
Well, after a reboot, it showed up in Device Manager (Win7 Pro pre-loaded), with (I think) a Code 37 or 39 or something, it mentioned that the device couldn't initialize, due to BIOS / Firmware issues.
The factory M.2 PCI-E wifi card is a RealTek, 82373E or something like that. I bought a pair of them on ebay off of a Chinese vendor for under $4 ea. (I was looking to upgrade, but settled on the same card as the factory OEM, thinking compatibility would be better.)
Anyways, I didn't need to replace the card.
What I did was, re-flash the system firmware. And... VIOLA! It fixed the wifi. Reboot Windows 7, now it showed the familiar antenna bars, and the yellow globe, ready to select a wifi network.
Before, it showed the network monitor icon, with a red X through it.
I'm posting this thread for completeness, in case someone in the future might run into a similar problem.
Seems kind of bizarre to me, though, not sure how BIOS/UEFI got corrupted, or even how it didn't error at POST if BIOS/UEFI was corrupted. Maybe it was just that the CMOS settings got reset, when it was flashed? I don't know, I tried removing the battery. (Both the laptop battery, and the coin cell.)
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