[igiveup]

My daughter (a different daughter than the one whose computer issues are in a thread on the HJT forum) has a Compaq Presario F730US running Windows Vista home edition. When trying to access the internet via our wireless network today she slide the button on the front of her computer that you slide to connect to the internet. The light stayed amber instead of turning green. She clicked on HP wireless assistant and the program did not run. WLAN does not show up in her device manager.

At her apartment she has been using an external wireless modem to access networks in her neighborhood. Her internal wireless was interfering with the external connection so she shut the internal one off via the switch on the front of her computer. This has always worked ok for her in the past. Could that have affected the internal wireless?

She did the disable/enable of the network connection. This did not help. Her boyfriend looked at things and discovered that the WLAN was missing in the device manager.

She then restarted her computer and installed all Windows updates and restarted computer again. At this point she realized that she no longer had audio. When she holds the cursor over the speaker icon on the task bar it says "No audio ouput device is installed".

At this point she got on the phone with HP tech support. Their only solution was for her to pay $300 and ship it to them to see if they could figure out the problem. There are several models of Presario that have this very problem and HP will replace the WIFI card or other problems but her model is not one of them (this is from HP.com).

[JohnWill]

How old is this computer? If it's under warranty, I can't see where the $300 comes into play! It sounds like you have more failures than just networking.

[igiveup]

I don't know exactly how old it is. It was purchased last year but was used and is not under warrenty. My daughter called me this morning to say the she removed the Windows updates and now her sound is working fine. But the WIFI card is still an issue.

[Rich-M]

Why not go to HP site and download the wireless driver and run it again though it sounds like there is a switch off that controls the wireless card somewhere on the laptop.

[JohnWill]

If the device doesn't show up at all in Device Manager, drivers won't fix it.

It may be disabled in the BIOS, or the wireless card may be loose in the socket. You can open the access door on the bottom of the machine and reseat the wireless card, remove the battery to do this.

Another possibility is that the wireless card is simply bad.

[Rich-M]

Yeah good point if it isn't shut down on the laptop or the bios then it probably is gone.

[igiveup]

I removed and then put back the wireless card and still no deal. How do I check to see if it was disabled in the BIOS?

[igiveup]

No one ever got back to me about how to find out if the wireless card was disabled in the BIOS. We are going to just assume that the wireless card is bad. Since she has the USB wireless adaptor we'll call it good for now.

[JohnWill]

You have to enter the BIOS setup and check the I/O options. Many HP BIOS versions don't have any option to disable the wireless, so if you can't find it, you can assume it's probably not there.