# Wifi greyed out on windows 8.1 - help?



## Mussels (Oct 29, 2014)

Got a weird problem on my new i7 laptop - the wifi option greys itself out after a reboot, and will not re-enable.

Atheros AR5B93 - works fine and gives me 300Mb speeds most of the time.

Fixes that dont work:

*Changing drivers
*Disabling/re-enabling the adaptor
*Toggling airplane mode via physical button/software buttons in control panel/metro settings.
*updating all windows updates

Fixes that do work:
*using USB wifi
*shutting down the PC and booting it up works fine. its ONLY a restart that causes this. sleep mode is also fine.


Any ideas?


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 29, 2014)

Check the antenna cables too. Plausible that wifi controller is defective, ive seen several with atheros controllers be junk or out of no where dump the driver. Id say usb is the best solution to this problem or returning it


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## Mussels (Oct 29, 2014)

eidairaman1 said:


> Check the antenna cables too. Plausible that wifi controller is defective, ive seen several with atheros controllers be junk or out of no where dump the driver. Id say usb is the best solution to this problem or returning it



its a second hand laptop, i cant really return it 

I had to upgrade the wifi since the included broadcom garbage doesnt work with windows 8.1 at all - i've got a pile of the damn things HP used that just dont work in 8.1 and that was my only spare. I really should switch this with the 150Mb atheros in my other laptop and see if the problem transitions to the other laptop...


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 29, 2014)

Mussels said:


> its a second hand laptop, i cant really return it
> 
> I had to upgrade the wifi since the included broadcom garbage doesnt work with windows 8.1 at all - i've got a pile of the damn things HP used that just dont work in 8.1 and that was my only spare. I really should switch this with the 150Mb atheros in my other laptop and see if the problem transitions to the other laptop...



good idea dude


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## remixedcat (Oct 29, 2014)

Does it in windows 7 or 8??


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## Mussels (Oct 29, 2014)

OK heres a weird result.

I changed wifi adaptors - same problem

I changed hard drives - i moved my SSD from my i5 laptop across and it STILL happened.

So it's not an issue with the wifi card or the OS/software setup, its a glitch that only happens on a reset?


I disabled "fast boot" to see if it helped, and then wifi doesnt work at all... so it only works on this laptop from a 'fast boot' scenario, and not a cold boot one?

What the feck HP/microsoft? :/


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## 95Viper (Oct 29, 2014)

If you have Bluetooth and/or NFC enabled... try disabling them.


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## Mussels (Oct 29, 2014)

I've found the solution to this, and its dumber than i thought.


HP have a device that shows up as unknown, but is in fact a 'wireless button' to allow the Fn keys on the keyboard to turn wifi on and off.

Its broken, but you cant 'disable' it only uninstall. A fresh copy of windows without that driver installed has none of the bugs.

Damnit HP, somehow i've got a house full of your laptops but you still screw me over with stupid things.


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## remixedcat (Oct 29, 2014)

acer does that crap too...


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## Mussels (Oct 29, 2014)

its just one broken driver that glitches things out. since it works from a cold boot i doubt the problem will ever get fixed - i can live without a hardware button to force airplane mode on my laptop.


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Oct 29, 2014)

My Acer laptop does the same thing but it usually happens after waking up from sleep mode. Doesn't do it all the time. A reboot fixes it.


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