I woke up this morning to find that my laptop can't connect to the internet. It shows it's connected to the router, but there's no actual internet access, and everything else in my house is working fine. I tried forgetting the network on Windows 10 and reconnecting, but that didn't help. I even uninstalled the drivers and rebooted, but now the WiFi button is missing, and while the WiFi adapter shows as enabled in the control panel, I can't set up a connection or search for networks. When I checked with network interface view, it said my WiFi card status is 'hardware disconnected' for all WiFi adapters. I also tried using a USB WiFi dongle, but that doesn't work either; it won't let me search for networks.
2 Answers
It looks like you uninstalled your WiFi drivers without reinstalling them which might be an issue. Make sure you have all the necessary drivers back on your system.
You might want to restart the network adapter and reinstall the drivers. Also, try holding down the power button for about 30 seconds to reset the system.
I didn't actually delete them; I uninstalled them while keeping the files. Usually, they come back on their own. The adapter is still showing up in device manager.