sqwabb: The case of the disappearing Wi-Fi, or more proof hardware buttons are bad

The case of the disappearing Wi-Fi, or more proof hardware buttons are bad

Posted by Unknown

Yesterday did not go according to plan at all. My free time was completely eaten up by OPCPs -- Other People's Computer Problems. I wasn't able to fix the second OPCP: Jezzi's Acer, but I was able to solve the first one over breakfast.

OPCP number one: Henry's laptop gains Windows 7, but loses it's wireless

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After the fix, Henry searches for "server pack," rather than "service pack."[/caption]

Homeless Henry had a nice Toshiba laptop, but by June, he hadn't. Something went wrong -- the laptop equivalent of shaken baby syndrome, I think. This week Henry found two working laptops in one evening: An HP Pavilion dv6000, and a Dell Inspiron. The Dell looked to be the better, newer, laptop, but had a password. The HP Pavilion, on the other hand, like a junker car, was completely unlocked. I saw both laptops the morning after Henry found them. The HP went online effortlessly, but Henry couldn't log onto his Facebook page -- the same problem we'd had with his Toshiba, for the same reason -- the HP "thought" the year was 2006, it's manufacture date. Fixing the date allowed Henry to get onto his Facebook page.

My so-called "tank-top" is also a dv6000, but not identical to Henry's, which seems older. It's product number is: rn914ua#abl. The HP Product Specifications for that number don't sound worse, but I subsequently pimped my dv6000's specs considerably.

With the HP, Henry had a Windows XP laptop with working Wi-Fi, a gigabyte of ram, and a paper cup-sized hard drive. The laptop's elderly battery couldn't hold a charge, but Skype (which Henry uses to talk to his relatives) was already installed. However, Henry had also binned install disks for Windows 7 -- both 32- and 64-bit -- with activation code. In an effort to fix what wasn't broken, Henry installed Windows 7 on the HP. I would've left the HP as is, so I could use it's Wi-Fi to tackle the Dell, but c'est la vie.

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Problems, problems, problems. Notice it's always buttons, buttons, buttons?[/caption]

Henry brought his dv6000 to McDonalds yesterday morning. After he installed Windows 7, the Wi-Fi didn't work; the laptop couldn't see any wireless connections. Looking in Devices, somewhere in Control Panels, we could see the Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN driver was installed, and reported to be working properly. I leapt on the possibility that the Wi-Fi hardware switch was just turned off (the light beside it was red) but toggling the switch did nothing. I then set about finding, and downloading, the original wireless drivers.

I recommend getting original drivers from the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) whenever possible. I will say this for Hewlett Packard, they scrupulously maintain support archives of drivers, and manuals, going back at least 15 years. Over the last five years I have always been able to find the original drivers for ancient, and obsolete HP laptops, which is a good thing. Thank you for that HP (as for crappy build quality, and killing Palm...).

Using the dv6000's Product Number (rn914ua#abl), to get my bearings, I ended up on this HP Pavilion dv6000 CTO Notebook PC support page. This laptop predates Windows 7, so I chose the Vista, 32-bit option, which gave me four network drivers to download. I ignored the two Bluetooth drivers, because the laptop didn't have Bluetooth hardware, I did download the two remaining drivers; the Broadcom Wireless LAN Driver, and the HP Wireless Assistant. Both installed with no issues.

After a reboot. The laptop could still see no wireless connections, but, clicking the wireless icon in the system tray now kicked up the HP Wireless Assistant, which indicated the wireless adapter was turned off, and gave us the ability to turn it on. Voila! Wireless connections were now available, and Henry connected to the McWi-Fi easily.

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Connected! There's no reason the Vista drivers should work in Windows 7, but they did.[/caption]

Because, the wireless drive had already been installed, it seemed to me that the missing piece of the puzzle had been the HP Wireless Assistant, and that it was required to get around the fact that the hardware Wi-Fi "on-off" switch didn't work anymore -- I already knew that the power button, didn't work -- Henry had found that one of the HP's "quick launch," or "Quick Play" buttons to the right of the actual power button would turn the computer on. Henry said that with XP he couldn't turn the Wi-Fi off.

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