How to enable wireless adapter

[OldmanDon]

I am currently running a HP Pavilion 17 Laptop with Windows 7 Professional.  On a few occasions in the past the wireless adapter in the unit stopped working.  I don't recall what I did to get it working again then however at this time I cannot get it to enable although I followed all the steps for changing adapter settings on the Network and Sharing Center.  When I select Connect it simply shows that it is not connected.  Nothing I tried seemed to help.  I have a Belkin Wi-Fi unit which is working and my laptop works as long as I have an Ethernet cable connected.  However if I disconnect the cable the laptop will not connect via the wireless adapter.  In the past it would always remain connected to the Wi-Fi even if I disconnected the cable.  PLEASE give me any thoughts you might have to troubleshoot this.  Thanks in advance for your effort and help.

[OldmanDon · Accepted solution]

Just wanted to let everyone know that I found the solution to my problem using an answer from the same problem posted last year.  Repeated pressing the F12 button with the image of an airplane on it turned on the wireless adapter.  Pardon my ignorance but thanks all the same to anyone who took time trying to help me.

OldmanDon

[Lloyd337]

I tried the F12 buton several times.  I kept hitting it after laptop was on. I kept  hitting it while turning laptop on. These methods did not work.   But thanks anyway.

[OldmanDon]

Sorry to hear that the action that helped me resolve my problem did not work for you.  As I stated, the F12 function key on my computer may perhaps have a different action on your machine.  Several of possible solutions I found when trying to resolve this issue on my computer mentioned to use a "wireless on/off button" which I could not identify on my computer.  However I found that the F12 key on my particular lap top was to turn on or off airplane mode.  This is the reason I tried it and it worked for me.  Recently I had a recurrence of this problem and tried the F12 key with no immediate solution.  When this occurred I turned the computer off and rebooted and "HOORAY" the machine rebooted with the wireless adapter turned on again.  I don't know if this long winded explanation will help you but I hope it does.  If not, keep trying with the discussion board as I have found that in all cases I did finally get a solution that worked for me.

[WA07]

The troubleshooter enables the adapter for me.  I need to know how to keep the adapter from frequently needing to be reset.

[grwillis]

Any advise on the network adapter issue?  Trouble shooter will reset it for me but want to know how to correct it everytime I turn the computer on.

[WA07]

Resetting the TCP/IP seemed to work for me, so far there have been no re-occurances of the problem.