Wireless button light doesn't change colour

[milleniumaire]

Hi, I have a Zbook 15 G2 and I've noticed that the wireless button situated to the right side at the back of the keyboard and below the screen NEVER changes from being a white light.

There are two buttons side by side, with the left button controlling the wireless setting and the right button controlling the audio.  When I press the audio button, the brightly lit button changes to amber, however, this does NOT happen with the left hand wireless button.

There is also a white light at the front left of the laptop amongst a cluster of 4 lights.  This light also does not change and is always bright white.

Initially, I assumed the button wasn't working as no matter how many times I press it, nothing seems to happen, however, if I have HP Connection Manager running, it indicates that the Wi-fi and bluetooth are being turned off/on when I press the wireless button, so clearly it is doing something.

Because the wifi light and the button never change colour I don't know if the wifi is on or off without running the HP Connection Manager, which is clearly wrong according to the user manual!

Any ideas on why the wifi/wireless button lights aren't working (or are working but only showing a white light all the time)?

[milleniumaire]

Here's some more information based on my observations over the last day.

According to the HP Connection Manager, my wireless was disabled, but both the wireless button and wi-fi indicator were brightly illuminated indicating that wireless was working!  When I rebooted the laptop, I noticed the wirless button was showing amber and it stayed this way until I used the HP Connection Manager to enable wifi, then the button went bright white again, but it stayed bright white regardless of how many times I pressed it and regardless of what HP Connection Manager showed as the status of my wifi!

When I open HP Connection Manager, it displays three settings:

Wi-Fi (Wireless LAN) 

Bluetooth

Ethernet (Wired LAN)

The first two have "buttons" next to them, which I'm able to click on to toggle their status.  The Ethernet setting is showing as Connected, which is true as I'm currently using a wire to connect to my home network.

Currently, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth settings are showing: Disabled by wireless button.

Here's what happens when pressing the various buttons:

Wi-Fi Setting in HP CM            Bluetooth Setting in HP CM       Wireless Button     Front wifi Indicator      Windows Connection

Disabled by wireless button  Disabled by wireless button     Bright white               Bright white                       Computer Icon

   Press wireless button ......

Not Connected -> Connected    On                                                    Bright white               Bright white                       Wireless Icon

  Press wireless button ......

 Disabled by wireless button  Disabled by wireless button     Bright white               Bright white                       Computer Icon

   Press wireless button ......

Not Connected -> Connected    On                                                    Bright white               Bright white                       Wireless Icon

  Click on Wi-Fi button in HP CM.....

Nothing changes while it shows Disabled by wireless button

              Off                                         On                                                    Bright white               Bright white                       Computer Icon

So, pressing the wirless button is switching on the wi-fie and bluetooth between enabled and disabled, but the colour of the button never changes.  Is this the usual behaviour?  It seems strange that it doesn't turn amber when it is disabled (as was the case with my previous HP Elitebook laptop) and is what should happen according to the user guide!

The Windows network icon at the bottom right of the task bar, does switch between a small Computer Monitor icon and a wireless icon depending on whether wireless is enabled or not so I guess I can use this to determine the wifi status, but then what's the point of having two wireless indicators if they don't do anything?

[milleniumaire]

Come on people!

Has anybody else got a HP ZBook 15 G2 laptop or am I the only person who has purchased this model?  If you have one, can you confirm what happens to the light on the wireless button and the light at the front left edge?  It would be interesting to know if the lack of a colour change (amber/white) is normal or not.

I've noticed that when wireless is disabled by pressing the wireless button (which is still brightly lit), rebooting the laptop causes the wireless button to be amber.  However, as soon as it is pressed, regardless of how many times (to toggle wifi on and off) the amber light will change to a full white light and stays that way i.e. it never changes to amber.

I know this is a trivial thing as I'm able to use the Windows 7 taskbar icon to determine if I have a wired or wireless connection, but I still think this may be a fault with my laptop.

Does anyone from HP monitor these forums?  If so, how about grabbing yourself a Zbook 15 G2 and experimenting with the wireless button for 5 minutes?

[Dennis_Handly]

>Does anyone from HP monitor these forums?

This is a peer to peer forum, not an official HP support site.
Have you tried contacting the HPSC?
http://www.hp.com/go/hpsc

[milleniumaire]

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the serial number on my work laptop, so I'm unable to contact HP support directly as this is required.

It seems strange that the serial number label doesn't exist!

I may have a word with the PC department to ask why it is missing.

[Dennis_Handly]

>It seems strange that the serial number label doesn't exist!

I had a similar problem except the label was there but worn away on a few digits.  😞

(I couldn't figure why they couldn't find it since I registered it.)

Fortunately they asked if I had the box and there it was.

[milleniumaire]

Although there is no label on the underside of the laptop, I found the serial number in the battery compartment, so have raised a call with HP.

I've noticed a number of strange things happening with the wifi on Zbook, none of which occurred with my previous elitebook:

- I'm unable to remote connect to the Zbook when it is using wifi to connect to my home network.  Once the wired connection is plugged in, remote connect works.  Very strange, but this may be a Windows 7 issue!

- Whenever the Zbook is rebooted, it seems to have "disabled" the wireless adapter, so wifi CANNOT be used, regardless of how many times I press the wifi button or use HP connect to turn it on and off.  Using device manager to disable, then re-enable the wireless adapter sorts the issue instantly and it's back to normal!

[Daetee]

Hey,

I have same/similar issue. The button led doesn't change color to ambre when pressed, though in Connection manager the WIFI and BT is marked as disabled. But it switches the states and display a balloon tip at right bottom corner, so it's not that bad.

[TJLP]

Hi there,

We recently aquired 35 HP ProBook 650 G2s that we were having a similar issue on.  Our company installs basic Win 7 operating systems using a system Image that we pull from a server.  After creating the image for these machines we noticed that the wireless button would stay blue after pushing it and the wireless would not actually turn off.  I installed the HP Connection Manager and monitored what was happening when I pushed the button.  The button was actually just turning off the blue tooth radios instead of the wireless card.  Its my understanding that the button should turn them both off.  After tyring a few things we found that the HotKeys support software was not installed on the image that was created earlier.  I downloaded the latest version of the software as listed in the Drivers & Software section of HP's website for this model, installed it and gave it a test.  Everything started to working as it should.

Hope this helps. 

[c2x2p]

reinstalled the wireless button driver and guess what IT WORKS!!!!!!!! easy fix should have thought of it before.