My Asus A8J laptop suddenly lost connectivity tonight while I was in the middle of doing something online. I was opening a saved Firefox session with about fifteen sites loading at once when it just…stopped.
The computer connects fine when plugged in via a cable, and the wireless network is working fine with my other devices.
Under the Devices Manager, the wireless network adapter shows up fine. It’s still listed as the associated device with my Wireless Network Connection under the Network Connection screen, although its status is “not connected”. Duh. If I attempt to View Available Wireless Networks, nothing shows up. When I choose the “Repair” option, it hangs at the “Connecting to the wireless network” step. Of course, running the network wizard doesn’t get anywhere, because it doesn’t see any wireless networks.
So I presume the network card has just died. Is that how they die? And would it still be showing up in my Device Manager if it died? That seems weird to me that the computer still recognizes it.
Anyone have any suggestions for how to confirm and diagnose the problem?
seems like the connection to your antenna broke. is the machine still under warranty? if not you are fooked, or better be darn handy with precision screw drivers :D
If the hardware button didn’t work, the other suggestion is to turn of bluetooth and reboot. I used to constantly lose connectivity like you desscribe on a laptop until I turned off the bluetooth hardware.
That’s exactly what was happening to my dad’s laptop for about a full month before we figured out that there was a button on the front of the laptop that turned wireless on and off. I had to teach him to make it a habit to check the system tray’s power settings to check if it’s turned on, when we should have just looked to see if the button was lit up. I don’t know why they put it on the front, of all places, where it was easy to hit if you shifted the laptop around on your lap while sitting on a couch or in bed.
I’m curious … what’s the reason for said button? When would you be in a position to need to quickly shut off your wireless networking? So quickly that it would necessitate a button on the laptop case?
When we had IBMs, the switch was in the front. People accidentally hit that switch all the time. Now we have Dells, and they’re on the side next to the dvd drive. People accidentally hit that switch even more.
To save battery power, and it can be implemented trivially since a lot of these wireless devices are USB, so the switch is a plain old physical connect/disconnect.
If it’s turned off via a software toggle, the wireless logic will still be draining some power as it waits to see if it’s toggled back on, while the switch will completely physically isolate it and it won’t drain any power at all. I have no idea how much of an actual difference it makes, though. It might be a holdover from ye olden days when the drain was larger and battery life even more precious.
(Edit: And I’m thinking primarily of slide switches here. Buttons and Fn-key combos are probably just because people expect laptops to have shortcuts for all sorts of things, even if it’s controllable by a program as well.)
I know a few people with laptops where the wi-fi is toggled with a touch-sensitive button. There’s supposed to be a blue light when it’s on, but some driver upgrade happened automatically (Microsoft drivers instead of manufacturer’s) so the light doesn’t ever switch on. Fun to debug, when there never was a light to miss.
3.4cm wi-fi cards in 5.4cm slots are even more fun. It only takes a little nudge to lose connection and have the system panic, requiring a reboot to get the network back.
I’ve also had a USB wi-fi stick just die. RealTek chipset that one day didn’t register with the system, and never even showed up as USB hardware connected.
I suppose if you wait until the absolute last second and can’t take the time to right click an icon and turn off your wireless networking.
It seems like a really bad design decision judging from the number of tech support stories in this thread. They could have at least made it one of those pinhole buttons where you need to insert something to press it so you can’t do it by accident.
Okay, even though this is a a 9 year old topic, I feel this an appropriate spot to post this. I bought a brand new Helios 500 laptop two weeks ago, and everything was great until yesterday when the wireless network adapter stopped working. In Device Manager, I checked “show hidden devices” and can see the “Killer® Wireless-AC 1550i Wireless Network Adapter (9560NGW)” but it’s grayed out. I reinstalled the drivers, which updated successfully, but despite restarts, nothing’s changed. When I check properties on the adapter, the device status states “currently this hardware device is not connected to the computer (code 45). To fix this problem, reconnect this hardware device to the computer.”
I’m at a loss as no hardware or software was recently changed on the laptop. I hate technology so much. :(
