Windows 10: WiFi Settings Tab Missing; WiFi Tray Icon Missing

It was working day before yesterday.

The Tray icon only shows the network/Ethernet adapter; the wifi icon is missing. Normally I'd click on the wifi icon to connect to wifi networks; that option is not available. Instead I get "Not Connected - No Connections Available." (If I plug in an Ethernet cable, that message goes away. But I need wifi!)

I head into the "Settings" app, choose "Network & Internet", and the topmost tab is "Airplane Mode"; the "Wifi" tab is missing from the Settings app.

I head into the control panel, network and internet, network connections, change adapter settings, and my Wi-Fi adapter is there, enabled, and full green signal strength.

"Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6235"

Disabled it and reenabled it to see if that would help, didn't help. Rebooting (twice) didn't help. Full power reset (press-hand-hold power button for 5 seconds) and restart didn't help.

Ran network troubleshooter, it says there may be an issue with the wifi adapter's device driver; it tried to fix it but failed. So I manually updated the device driver in the Properties dialog; that seemed to actually install a new driver (based on how long it took) but it didn't help.

I wonder if there was a recent auto-update for this device that's causing a problem? Or is there some way behind the scenes to hook up this device (who's driver seems to be working) with the windows 10 app (which isn't recognizing it)?

I'm pulling my hair out, and wasting a lot of time on this. Any help from the experts would be greatly appreciated.

Specs:
Windows 10 Home 64-bit, upgraded from Windows 7 about 3 months ago
Samsung Laptop

:)

 

System Notification Tray Missing

My entire system notifications tray is missing. The Date and Time Icon is still present but everything else is missing. I can't get to my battery icon, wifi icon, Google Drive icon etc. There's no arrow to expand, it's just gone...

TIA for any help y'all can give.

 

Windows 10 nightmare

Apologies if I'm missing something here. To switch the wifi on/off in Windows 10 simply click on the network item in the system tray, then click on the wifi button. Lit up = on, unlit = off. No need to go near settings?

 

OK I solved it this way:

in control panel, network and internet, network connections, change adapter settings:
1) disabled the adapter
2) uninstalled the driver (removing from disk)
3) deleted the adapter (right-click didn't let me do it; the option was disabled, but I could delete it by pressing the "del" key while selected)
4) refreshed the view (f5) and saw that the adapter was no longer in the list
5) went to the device manager
6) removed the device
7) chose "find new hardware", the device showed up in the list again
8) rebooted.

I was connected to the internet through an Ethernet cable connection while I did this; it may have helped but I'm not sure.

 

I wanted to thank Sonrisante for his post as his was the one that helped me. I could see the wifi networks before logging in and that would be the only time I could connect to a network. Once I logged into Windows, Windows could not see the wifi networks. Using Sonrisante's solution, I removed the Wifi adapter from the system and then rescanned for hardware to reinstalled the driver and this corrected the problem of not seeing Wifi networks when logged in.

Relating to Sonrisante's last comment, I noted that for the Wifi adapter be removed from the list of adapters in the network share window, I had to plug in my ethernet cable so that the system had a network connection to use. It appears that another connection be available before one is released. But not sure if this was required to correct my problem.