Laptop does not detect home wifi signal after a circuit breaker trip

Yesterday the main circuit breaker in the house tripped. I reset the breaker, but my laptop, which was connected to the home router wifi signal at the time, cannot identify the SSID of the router. My home wifi doesn't show up in my available connections basically. Right now I'm connected to the router via LAN cable, which obviously works.

The curious parts:
* Other devices do identify and connect to the wifi signal, including my phone and IPTV.
* The laptop wireless adapter identifies all the other wifi signals in the area, including my phone hotspot.

Steps I've taken already:
* Restart router by unplugging/plugging
* Restart laptop
* Turn laptop wifi switch off/on

Any suggestions? In 20 years of using wifi I've never seen anything like this.

Yes, it does appear and it is working it seems, as it recognizes every other wifi signal, except the one that was connected to when the circuit breaker tripped, my home wifi.

Should I disable/enable the adapter?

What could have happened when power was lost? This is VERY strange.

Thank you for the follow up.

Snick said:

Hi sunsetlover,
Device Manager, under Network Adapters, does your card appear?



The info from here will help us too!

System Info - See Your System Specs - Windows 7 Help Forums

In addition to checking the WiFi settings in the router, and if that doesn't work, try a hard reset of the router and then reconfigure everything again in the router for the WiFi SSID, password, etc. If that still doesn't work download the latest firmware for your router and install it. You may need to do another hard reset after you upload the latest firmware for the router.

Question so we are clear:

Was the router powered off or the laptop when the breaker tripped?

Sometimes abrupt power outages can do damage to electronics like computers or a computer's power supply, etc. I have read this on may other tech forums where a lightning storm killed the power and one's PSU was fried. And I had this happen when the power went out and it took the power adapter out for my netbook.

Comment from Bree:


>"Everything points to the router being at fault"


This does seem likely, given the evidence supplied.


I've had something similar with several lightning strikes just a second or so apart. In the end, re-loading the router configuration that I'd backed up way earlier when the network was stable did it.



I've only had experience with 3 or 4 routers, but all of them (Netgear, NetComm) did offer a config backup/restore function.

Thank you all so much.

I logged into the router's settings page and everything seems to be in order as before. I don't think there's an option for 5Ghz as this is an old router supplied by the ISP, at least 5-6 years.

As far as the laptop wireless adapter, I'm sure now that it's fine and it's not where the problem is, as I just tried a USB wireless dongle and that also doesn't detect my home wifi SSID. So that's a positive at least.

And yes, the router was powered on, connected via wifi (not LAN) to the laptop, when the breaker tripped.

So, yes, the only thing left to do is a hard reset of the router. I'll report after I do that.

The other positive out of this strange mess is that my phone is still detecting and connecting to the wifi signal as if nothing happened.

Bree said:

Everything points to the router being at fault. As your other devices can still see/connect, perhaps they see it on 5Ghz while the laptop is only using 2.4GHz (or the other way round). It's difficult to see how a power cut could have damaged the laptop as its battery would have kept it working.

The power cut may have corrupted or reset the router's WiFi settings. Sign in to its webadmin page and check the WiFi related settings are correct for both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.

F22 Simpilot said:

In addition to checking the WiFi settings in the router, and if that doesn't work, try a hard reset of the router and then reconfigure everything again in the router for the WiFi SSID, password, etc. If that still doesn't work download the latest firmware for your router and install it. You may need to do another hard reset after you upload the latest firmware for the router.

Question so we are clear:

Was the router powered off or the laptop when the breaker tripped?

Sometimes abrupt power outages can do damage to electronics like computers or a computer's power supply, etc. I have read this on may other tech forums where a lightning storm killed the power and one's PSU was fried. And I had this happen when the power went out and it took the power adapter out for my netbook.

Post what you get after a hard reset of the router/modem. I'm now wondering if it's a MAC address mess up of some sort in the router/modem for your laptop.