Wifi adapter disappeared

[suddu22]

My Wifi adapter suddenly disappeared after a restart. Now it does not appear in the device manager. There is no trace of a Wifi adapter whatsoever left in my laptop. All of this happened over night when the laptop was in shutdown state. I tried installing drivers but even that did not work. I tried to run Ubuntu on a USB to check and found no trace of a Wifi adapter even on Ubuntu. Ethernet works fine but keeps refreshing itself every 10-15 minutes. I've tried restarting the system several times and that is not working. Please suggest a solution to this problem.

Laptop model no. : 15 ak-007tx (HP Pavilion Gaming PC)

Age: Just over a year

[JB4CA]

Looking at recent posts to this forum, I have detected a surge in users of older HP laptops losing their wireless connectivity but Ethernet still working.

That happened on my laptop and I was able to fix it by disabling the power savings for LAN in the BIOS.  Others say they cannot find this setting... And it is because they have the UEFI bios

You can read thru one of the long threads in the forum where I have been trying to resolve this issue for somebody else

[suddu22]

Thanks for the response. I've disabled power saving mode for the LAN port but unfortunately, it did not solve the problem. Can you provide a link to the long forum post that you have mentioned in your reply? Any other help is most welcome. It has really become frustrating for me. Another point is that my laptop is not an old one. To be accurate, it is 1yr, 3months old. Is there any way to check if the hardware itself got damaged because I've almost exhausted all the other options.

[Rainbow23]

Hi @suddu22,

Welcome to HP Forums, this is a great place to get support, find answers and tips.

Thank you for posting your query, I'll be more than glad to help you.

I understand that you are facing issues with your HP Notebook PC wherein the wi-fi adapter suddenly disappeared after a restart.

This issue could occur if the network drivers are not updated.

Let's go through a few steps that may help to fix this issue.

And here are a few steps to uninstall and reinstall the drivers from device manager:

1. Click Start, and enter Device Manager into the Search field. Click Device Manager.

2. Double-click the Network adapters category.

3. Right-click the name of the Network Adapter and select Uninstall.

4. On the "Confirm Device Uninstall" window, click OK.

5. When the network adapter software has been uninstalled, restart the computer. The computer will reinstall the device driver software.

6. After the computer restarts and completes the installation of the device driver software, try connecting to the Internet.

If the issue persists, I suggest that you run the HP Support Assistant by following the link: Using HP Support Assistant (Windows 10, 8, 7)

Here's a related HP Forums post that seems to have helped others: Click here

Let me know how this works.

You have a good day ahead.

[JB4CA]

I continue to look thru the posts on this forum to see if anybody is making progress on the recent wireless connectivity issue and I just saw this:

the only way to fix it on the as of now new a6 7310 notebook is as follows- TYPE "device manager" into windows (10) search bar- SCROLL to "network adapters"-SELECT "realtek rtl8723be''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' wifi adapter" (which is the route cause of the problem)-RIGHT CLICK and "update drivers" use the internet to find and auto install option and thats it.

You are welcome to try that and see what improvement you see and post back on the forum

[suddu22]

As I have already mentioned, there is no Wifi adapter in the list of available network adapters. It disappeared after a restart as mentioned earlier. Please try to provide the solution to the problem. I have also tried the HP Support Assistant app troubleshooting and that does not help the cause at all.

[Chimney_83 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply and providing more information. 

If the wireless adapter missing or not detecting, it could be an issue with the wireless card itself. 

Have you run a wireless card test on your computer?

✅Download and install the HP Hardware diagnostics tool from this link. 

✅Once installed, shut down your computer.

✅Wait for a minute. 

✅Turn the computer On and keep tapping F2 repeatedly on startup to enter system diagnostics. 

✅Select the component test and run a wireless test on your computer. 

Refer to this HP Article for assistance. 

🛑If the test fails or does not detect the wireless card, you can try reseating the wireless module or contact our phone support to check on the service options available for your computer. 

If the test passes, restart your computer. 

✅Visit www.hp.com/drivers and the product number of your computer. 

✅Download and install the wireless adapter for your computer. 

🛑If the issue persists, perform a push-button reset on your computer and check.

Refer to this HP Article for assistance. 

We have this article with information that may be useful for your problems: Wireless Network Issues 

[suddu22]

Thank you for the prompt replies! After trying out all the software measures I narrowed it down to a hardware failure. I reseated the Wifi card and boom! It works.

[JB4CA]

I am glad to hear that you fixed your wireless connectivity issue.  As you are probably aware, there are a lot of people  with this same issue being posted recently.

I would like to know if your bios is a UEFI type, and if so, how you were able to disable the power savings feature for LAN in the BIOS.  Since others with a UEFI  bios reported that they cannot find that feature.

[suddu22]

My BIOS is using Legacy mode. Right click the Network adapter in Device Manager, select Properties. Go to Power Management tab and disable the power saving feature. I have no idea about UEFI mode.