My laptop's wireless has oddly been disabled

Hello all,

new to the forum.

Here's my Laptop's info:

Acer Aspire 5551
AMD Turion II P520 Dual-Core Processor 2.30 GHZ
Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 Bit

Under Network Adaptors:
Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter
Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet
Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter #2




As the title states, my wireless just stopped working. It all started yesterday when I got home from work. I normally put my laptop in hibernation and when I got home, I had an error message saying hibernation didn't proceed as normal and noticed my internet stopped working. My home's wireless is working fine as my phone is connecting and im now posting from my sisters old laptop via wi fi.

All of the drivers seem up to date and everything seems to working properly (according to Windows). HOwever, my wifi light on my computer is not turning on. I'll toggle the Fn+wifi button and nothing happens.

I noticed my computer had some service packs updated yesterday and when I installed everything, I rebooted my computer a few times and got it to work. Then I got home today and just stopped working again (with the same hibernation error message as stated above). I had another windows download and installation but this time the wireless is still not working.

I would appreciate some input as its really frustrating. Thanks in advance.

Try uninstalling and reinstalling the driver and / or the wireless card in the device manager.

Uninstall Device and Device Driver - Vista Forums

If the issue is being caused by a new driver update, check and if required rollback to the previous driver.

Device Manager - Roll Back Driver - Vista Forums

I've uninstalled all of the drivers under "network adapters" and had them reinstalled upon reboot and still nothing. And I cant rollback either.

I see no flags or error messages either. Windows seems to think everthing is working properly but my wifi light still does not turn on when I toggle the buttons.

Also, I noticed ive been getting windows updates since 5/31 so Im guessing one of these updates might be the culprit.

Windows updates do occasionally have the wireless card driver, depending on your brand. If that is the culprit, you need to uninstall the driver, then uninstall the card and reinstall MANUALLY by pointing it to the right driver. If you dont do that, it'll keep reinstalling the problematic driver and failing.

profdlp said:

What happens when you run the "Repair Network Connections" wizard?

At first the wizard would work and diagnose the problem(or at least state I'm not connected). But now it just gives me an error message stating the wizard cannot function properly. I'm stumped. I rebooted a bunch of times and still no go. I was reading that I might need to power off my computer for a few minutes and then restart. I'll give that a try once I get home from work.

Just update: Wireless is now working again. I turned off the PC for a few minutes opposed to a straight restart and the wifi is working again. Must of been the update that caused this.