I have an HP Pavilion dv4t-1200 entertainment notebook, and recently upgraded it to Windows 8. The wireless card never worked on Windows 8 so I reformatted the HDD and did a fresh install of Windows 7. however now I can't enable the wireless card. This is the problem I originally had with Windows 8. I can see the wireless network adapter which is enabled but the softkey on the keyboard is orange (meaning WiFi is turned off). The problem is that pressing the softkey won't enable the WiFi. All drivers are up to date. Please help. This is driving me nuts!!!
34 Answers
The only solution that worked for me was to open my laptop back cover and remove the Wi-Fi card. I turned on the laptop without the Wi-Fi card, shutdown the machine, and returned the wireless adapter before turning on the laptop again. It might sound a bit extreme but that worked for me. I also noticed a screw that holds the Wi-Fi adapter was missing and suspect this might be the root cause of the problem.
Boot up a live distro of Linux, such as Ubuntu. Test to see if you can use the WiFi through it, if you can, return here, if you can't, go to the local parts shop.
1I found a solution for anyone else out there with a similar problem. It was a bios issue. Simply go into the bios, and reset to default settings. Viola! the problem will be fixed and you will be able to enable wifi on your laptop again.
It's possible your wireless adapter is disabled on startup, because the helper program is not turned on. To check this, open the Start Menu, type msconfig and open the one result. Select the Normal startup radio button, click OK, then restart the computer. Hopefully this will force the wireless to turn on.
