Windows 10: Lenovo laptop with Windows 10 suddenly can't find wifi card

I need some help, please. I have a laptop that has worked fine for many years... then suddenly Windows 10 can't find my wifi card. Not just airplane mode. Not just a driver thing. The card is gone.


It no longer knows I have a wifi card. The funny thing is, bluetooth kept working (which is on the same card) and Win10 sees the device and drivers for BT. I went so far as to buy another wifi card (a used one because they are no longer manufactured) thinking the wifi portion might have finally failed, and it still does not recognize it.


I have scoured online forums, and found that this has usually been traced back to a driver issue or an update in Windows. I've tried everything people have suggested, changing power management and battery settings, removing the card and restarting without it and then replacing the card, turning wireless off in BIOS (and back on again), even uninstalling the device in device manager.


When this first happened - wifi networks didn't show up in the list (huh?) - I thought there was something wrong with wifi in the office. But then realized when I went on the road that there were still no wifi networks showing up. So I started exploring. The wifi network adapter in device manager had disappeared. I looked at hidden devices in "view" settings, and it showed up but was grayed-out. As I started exploring online, I saw one suggestion to remove the device and then re-install the factory driver. When I did this, the grayed-out network adapter disappeared from hidden devices, and has never came back.


Troubleshooter doesn't work because it doesn't know that the computer even has wifi - there are no "wifi" troubleshooting options that come up, only "network cable" related troubleshooting because it doesn't see the card anymore.


It seems to me that an update suddenly took my wifi card off of a list somewhere and now the OS doesn't recognize the card at all. Anybody have any previous posts to point me to? Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

:)

 

Wifi card suddenly stops with no error


(note: restarting the laptop fixes this until it happens again) this is something that happens randomly, I'll be doing something (usually requiring internet) and all the sudden the wifi card disappears from the connections list. I cannot see why this happens and it seems to happen randomly with no pattern. Opening device manager to the wifi card says that it has an error code 14 and that I need to restart to fix it, if I go the the details tab under Status I get these messages

and under problem code I get this

this is fixed by restarting but this happens 2-4 times a day and gets really annoying

 

Wifi and browser problems with windows 10


I'll tell you how I fixed an identical problem on a ASUS laptop that had run perfectly on Windows 7 and ran well on W10 from January until the Anniversary update in early August. I tried everything I found on this forum and two others. Nothing worked. The last thing someone suggested was disabling the adapter and using a WiFi dongle. Problem continued. Nobody suggested changing the wireless network adapter. I bought and installed an Intel 7260 WiFi card and just used the driver which was downloaded on the reboot after the install. All problems solved!!

I must have wasted two months reading and trying everything. Even the manufacturer support inferred I needed a new machine though they sent me a Windows 8.1 driver to try, with the same result.

I'd suggest contacting the manufacturer to determine if they white list any cards and see if they have suggestions for a compatible card. They may want you to buy another laptop but if the cards aren't white listed, a simple card swap to one compatible with Windows 10 seems to be the answer.

 

Will a laptop boot if I remove internal Wifi-card and detach antenna wires ?

Hello
Buying and tinkering with newer laptop wifi cards:
Will a HP or any brand laptop boot if I remove a internal Wifi-card mini pci-e half size and detach antenna wires ?
- Will it show always something like "notice: no wifi-card installed" on boot up or in Windows ?
- Or will it boot normally ( Like if a 1pc of RAM is removed or added ) and everything is normal just wifi and card is not there in Windows like if I would detach a PCI Wifi-card in a desktop computer ?

What is also the difference between 2-wire and 3-wire laptop wifi cards ? Will they work together compatibility ?
- Lenovo has: a black, grey and white wire.
- HP has: wires marked as (1.)black=AUX and (2.)black=MAIN.