Built-in Broadcom Wireless Card died

This happened a couple of weeks ago. I was on the Internet for a little bit, but had to go somewhere, so I put my laptop into hibernate, and when I came back, it was telling me it couldn't connect to a web page. I thought nothing of it because it tends to take a little bit for the wireless to reconnect.
About 10 minutes later, I finally realized something was wrong when I went to repair the connection. My wireless connection did not exist. I restarted my computer. No dice. I reinstalled the drivers. Nothing. It seems to be dead.
Is there anything that can be done? Is there another solution, like a BIOS configuration problem? Please help.

 

If it is still under warranty, you can send it back... if not you can go to places like newegg.com or zoomzipfly.com and order a wireless card...

Also, as a hail marry, you can try to load an older driver... I had to do this with my 3000z a couple of weeks ago. Have no idea why (well, I think windows update updated the drivers and it killed the connection).

 

Just curious, what model notebook do you have?

 

jtmat: you can't just install any wireless card into a HP/Compaq notebook. HP has a whitelist in their BIOS that restricts you to a handful of HP-supplied cards. I found that out the hard way. Something about FCC regs that only HP seems to follow.

I wouldn't assume that the wireless card is dead, not yet at least. There's nothing to do in the BIOS, but installing (or reinstalling) the latest wireless drivers from hp.com might overwrite the brain damage. The problem could be with your AP, a rouge 2.4GHz cordless phone polluting the band, etc.

 

Hey

I had the same thing happen to mine. I had to send it back to HP for repairs.
You can try to restore the factory defaults and see if the wireless connection comes back but I doubt it will.

Good luck!

Pat

 

Old brian... wth are you doing here? What a good surprise... I left your forum, the one for the 3000z... waiting on my new computer arrive, 6500t. Glad to see you! I don't know how many people know the great contributions you have made to so many on HP products.... Thanks!

No, I did not know about the wireless card deal and HPs... I'm reading threads and getting up to speed fast on the new products though.... thanks for the info.....

 

Thanks! Nice to be appreciated. I'm still a volunteer mod on r3000forums.com too but this site gets much more traffic. One of these days I should set up my own site to get those fat Google ad dollars (ha!) but I can't think of anything original and I'm too lazy anyhow .

 

unless your site has very high traffic google dollars are not going to be that big. The money comes when you join the affiliate networks and get % of sales from dell and other comapnies.

 

May seem silly buy make sure the wireless switch is turned on? Try to turn it off then on again. I know I've hit mine a few times on accident.