Windows 10: My laptop only accepts Ethernet cable and no wifi. What can I do

I can only connect to the internet with Ethernet on my laptop and I would like to connect using wifi. But it is not showing wifi

:)

 

laptop can't find wifi but connects with ethernet cable

Please try these troubleshooting steps that may help.

1. Make sure the router SSID broadcast is on.
   
2. Change the wifi channel to see if it resolves the problem.
   
3. Enter the SSID and WPA2 password manually and see if the laptop connects.
   
4. Temporarily turn off the encryption.
   
5. We go into device manager & check updates for wifi drivers, we may need to simply update the driver.
   
6. We go to Settings - Network & Internet - Status - Change Adapter Options, then right-clicked 'Ethernet' and disabled it. We do the same with wifi. Then we (with Ethernet still disabled) enabled wifi. It should re-connect to your wifi after a while.
   
7. We have to disconnect our Ethernet cable from our laptop and follow the steps:
   Start>Control Panel>Network and Sharing Center>Manage Wireless Networks and remove all wireless connections by right click on it and select Remove network from the drop down menu. After doing this, close the windows and scan for the wifi networks.
   Click on the available network and select connect. After a while, we will be asked to give a password for our wifi connection. Type the password and click on connect button. And now will be connected to our wifi network via wireless.
   
8. First is to disconnect the internet cable from the laptop then uninstall/reinstall the wifi adapter.
   Go to Device Manager and uninstall the wifi adapter.
   Once uninstalled, reboot the laptop and it should reinstall the driver automatically.
   After the reboot do try connecting to your wireless network again.
   If all these will not work, do also make sure that the wireless adapter is enabled. Depending the model of your laptop there should be key combinations on how to enable/disable it.
   

 

Ethernet cable settings

Hi Campbell,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

Please reply to the follow questions to get a better understanding on the issue:

• What is the model number of your laptop?
  
• Do you have a yellow exclamation on the network icon after connecting the cat 7 cable?
  

However, you can follow the troubleshooting steps from
Fix network connection issues in Windows.

Also, I suggest you to check the laptop manual or laptop manufacturer to know whether the Ethernet port of your laptop supports cat 7 cable.

Hope it helps.

Nikhar Khare

Microsoft Community – Moderator

 

Computer not recognizing Ethernet cable

Hi Vijay, I appreciate your help.

I will try each step even if I've already done it, just to make sure, and post my results.

A. When I troubleshoot internet connections, it tells me “Plug an ethernet cable into this computer” and says my cable might be broken or disconnected. However of course i have tried a different working cable with no luck.

when I troubleshoot network adapter, it says “plug an Ethernet cable into the network adapter ‘Ethernet’” which of course has already been done so it is not recognizing it.

B. I tried every suggestion/step listed (except for the wifi troubleshooting since my computer doesn't have wifi) and none of them worked.

C. When I run the windows update troubleshooter, it tells me “download and install pending updates” (Maybe it is not up to date because I tried reinstalling windows 10 to see if that would fix the internet, but it did not. I updated it like last week or
something like that) but of course I can't download the updates without internet. If I click “apply this fix” it tells me to plug in an Ethernet cable. But i believe windows 10 was up to date before this issue even began because I updated it just a week ago.

D. I do not understand this step. The guide is confusing to me. It also appears that I have to download tools in order to do this repair. I cannot download anything because my computer cannot connect to the internet. I don't have a USB flashdrive. I did
try reinstalling Windows 10 though and it did not help.