Laptop unable to detect wireless networks

[Mikebee21]

So I have clients Toshiba Laptop that won't pick up any wireless networks. So far I've tried the following repairs and nothing has worked.

Tried reinstalling the drivers.
swapped internal wireless card out for a known working one and the one that works wouldn't detect wireless networks either. So looks to be software causing it.
Firewalls turned off
Uninstalled all the bloatware that comes with wireless so its running off of windows.
Ran winsock, tried to repair connection.
I know my wireless works fine on other devices so my router isn't the problem.


Any ideas.

[pckid9234]

Dam i was gonna say winsoc
Sorry you took all my ideas

[Mikebee21]

Yea I think I might have to wipe the drive. I don't want to but might now have a choice unless someone else has an idea

[The Dude]

Did they disable the antenna? There's usually a physical button that can be inadvertently pressed.

Did you run the network troubleshooting?

[Mikebee21]

Wireless is enabled. There isn't a physical button, all there is a fn key and I tried that. I tried running the troubleshooting and it just says no wireless found.

[BigE4u]

Have you gone into the "internet options" in the control panel and reset everything back to default values?

1. control panel
2. internet options
3. advanced tab
4. restore advanced settings, then click on apply
5. reset, press reset again in the small popup window that follows, then press close
6. internet options
7. security tab
8. click on each icon and make sure only the custom level button is highlighted and all others greyed out
9. connections tab
10. lan settings
11. make sure all boxes are unchecked, then click ok
12. thats it and all your internet settings for windows are now back to correct default settings

[Mikebee21]

haven't tried that yet. One of my coworkers suggested running antivirus scan so I'm doing that right now. I will try that after I'm done.

Additional Comment:

I pulled the hard drive and ran a virus scan and it found a bunch so I wonder if that is the problem. I couldn't clean all the viruses so I decided to reformat. It seems like it was getting worse and worse so we will see if this resolves the problem.

[BigE4u]

I do the same when i cant run or install extra scanners on the infected hard drive... scanning it externally helps clean it up some, but you need to make a second pass with it back inside the machine just to double check.

But of course if its too much trouble, just save the files you want and reformat... just be sure to scan to clean the saved files before throwing them back on the hard drive(even if saving on external hard drive) after all is said and done, all your work(hours) will be undone if you throw infected files right back onto a cleaned OS.