wireless network adapter gone missing

Anonymous

Hi -

I've seen a number of similar questions but no solutions to my problem.

My system:

Toshiba A505-S6980

Windows 7 Home Premium - 64bit

Realtek WLAN driver

Problem:

After resuming from a sleep, the network adapter dissappeared. This happened before and they replaced the computer, after trying a system restore and then full recovery. Apparently, it's not the computer.

The Wireless adapter is missing from device manager, much less the network and connections area. In troubleshoot, the computer simply says a network cable needs to be plugged in. There is no wireless choice under network connections. There is no wireless adapter tab upon right click of Network Adapter in Device Manager.

The Realtek WLAN driver DOES appear in the Programs & Features list. I uninstalled, reinstalled, and also found/installed a patch for the driver. This did not work. I also started/automated the Autoconfig scripts for wireless. Nothing works.

Any help is appreciated.

-Tucson56

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Hi '

This just happened to me and I was able to get past it by doing several hard reboots. I had to fully charge the battery , and after three attempts with increasing intervals of time, the system appearently turned the wireless adapter back on.

After the card reappeared, I was able to find it in device manager again, in my case Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 2200 under network adapters . Then a right click, to properties , within properties you chose power Management tab. There you will probably discover that by default the computer is allowed to turn off this device to save power. Uncheck the box , click ok and reboot . Hopefully this will prevent it from happening again.

Hope this helps

Art Master T

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Anonymous

This same thing happened to me. What causes it to happen is a very low battery but found a simple solution to turn back on the wireless network adapter.

Hold down the Windows key and press x

menu should come up

click device manager

should go to a list of devices on your computer

expand network adapters from list

might be a few to choose from but look for 2 with the same name. one for wifi and one for ethernet

double click on the wifi network adapter

click on power management tab

click off the tab that allows the wifi to be turned off with low battery

click on drivers tab and enable device

should be good to go from there

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Anonymous

Hi tucson56, A. From how long do you face this problem? I would suggest you to check for the power management settings for your wireless adaptor and see if that help. 1.Open Network and Sharing Center (click the Start button, type Network and Sharing in the Start Search box, and press Enter) 2.Click the Change adapter settings link in the upper left of the navigation pane. 3.Right click the network connection you want to enable/disable power management support on and click Properties. 4.Click Configure. 5.On the Power Management tab, check or clear the Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power check box. A. When checked, power management is enabled on the network adapter. B. When cleared, power management is disabled on the network adapter. 6.You can enable Wake on LAN for all wake methods or just enable magic packet WoL: To enable Wake on LAN for all methods, check the Allow this device to wake the computer check box. To enable Wake on LAN for magic packet only, check the Allow this device to wake the computer check box and then check Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer check box. 7.Click OK. Additional information:

http://technet.microsoft.com/zh-cn/library/ee617165(WS.10).aspx

Hope this helps. Let us know the results.

Thanks & Regards,

Vijay B – Microsoft Support

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92 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-02-06T20:02:05+00:00

" I rather(corr.) discount broken hardware.... I remain totally convinced that the problem was in some combination of software confer changes.."

Thanks respectfully of your comments. True the tread has gone astray a bit. Fact is these are such incredibly (needlessly?) complex systems that one has to be super motivated/informed to troubleshoot.

As my final note, my lost wireless appeared right after updates. I bought the laptop, set it up minimally, then used it for nearly a year disallowing updates (my confidence, yeah). Then the wifi started quitting.

As an electronics tech by training I of course expected a possible hardware fault. Unfortunately there is no way to know until you try a replacement. So after 2 tries at a restore and only intermittent operation, I replaced the wireless adapter.

It is my belief that some hidden diagnostic in the OS fails out the adapter, does not report it, and just deletes it from view. A new OS load or system restore installs the adapter, then fails it out and hides it again. A new adapter fixed the problem, but I had deleted the old drivers so now my Asus wifi on/off button doesn't work. I will leave it as is.

Thanks to all who contributed. P.
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Anonymous

2014-02-06T02:33:21+00:00

Try to install updates from microsoft (you should see that you need alot of updates) !! The wireless is acting normal nowadays! You canThank me later :)

Actually what worked was to uninstall Kaspersky firewall Zonealarm then the drivers were able to bond properly with the winsocket thingy and then I was able to finally get wireless networks to appear instead of an X. Nothing I tried would work even several registry tweaks AND several Microsoft UPDATES....

I had to delete the drivers in Safe Mode (Old IT trick) and then reboot with no connectivity (no problem there) and THEN I installed the drivers from the ACER website which would not even work properly the first time it would say "COULD NOT INSTALL DRIVERS"... etc. etc...

So at least for ME it was a FIREWALL ISSUE, But Thanks for the CUT AND PASTE tried and TRUE advice... This issue really needed someone there to DUPLICATE the problem and think outside the BOX for this one... Turns out a regular USER was able to SOLVE it for me...

You're Welcome as WELL!

L
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