Flaky in and out wifi on DV8t "and others" fixed?

After exhaustive searches and fixes none of which seemed to stick,.... a solution for wifi going on and off on the DV8t may have finally been discovered!

After being active on this thread "541 pages and counting" for some time now, there have been many discussions about the issue.
While some have gone as far as replacing the whole keyboard in an effort to fix the capacitance button that turns the wifi on and off, others have tried other temporary mysterious fixes such as cleaning the area with alcohol, pulling the battery and let set a while and then replace and numerous other attempts which seem to only be temporary.

"Lovelaptops" gets the credit for this one... while going through exhaustive tech support on another laptop, it was suggested to set the bios to default settings and it fixed that one so he tried it on the DV8t too and walla!

At first, this would impress me as another silly "to do list" some tech without a brain or above minimum wage paygrade would suggest.... but in this case it actually worked!!!!

My wifi used to turn on and off, sometimes several times by itself within a minute and other times would go a few hours without a problem.
It finally got to where browsing was too tedious as the connection was usually trying to go down or trying to come up was was never consistent to chat or do anything.

I have updated my bios several times without incident on this computer... I am now at F:25 "the latest" and have been running that since it came out.

While the custom settings in bios are very limited, my custom settings "stuck" with each bios update.....

For some reason setting things back to defaults cleared the registers and allowed the bios to work as it should.

The only settings I used to have set were to turn off the "constant fan on" feature and I had virtual memory enabled.

Since settings things to default and then rebooting, I have since gone back in and again turned of the fan "constant on" feature and all is well.

For what its worth, I have since turned off the virtualization feature too as I never used it anyway... but everything did seemed stable with it on too.

I have gone 3 days now since resetting my bios and "not even once" has my wifi turned itself off!

For what its worth.... I had uninstalled my HP wireless assistant a couple weeks ago because I finally went to a usb wireless adapter and disabled my "Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6200 AGN" in an attempt to get consistent wireless.

I have obviously since reenabled "in device manager my "Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6200 AGN" adapter and now don't need my usb wireless anymore!!!

But I have "not" reinstalled the HP wireless assistant.

I think it will work fine now but I don't see the need for it so for now and keeping it out.

The reason I didn't like it was that even when I was on my usb wireless and the intel adapter had been disabled, my wifi light on my board would turn on and off all by itself "even though the driver was disabled"... after uninstalling it.. that went away.

Some may say "then it was the HP assistant causing the problem"... not so, because even when it was uninstalled I still had all my erratic wifi on and off behavior. I think it was the nerve that was still trying to activate the driver.

The bios was the brain and the source of all the problems.... once that was fixed, everything else should be good.

I hope this post will help others who have pulled their hair out about this issue and I wanted the fix to be easier to find than hidden in 541 pages of notes!

 

Given how many of these BIOS updates you're done on your DV8, Alan, I'm surprised that you weren't regularly resetting the BIOS to its "defaults" as it is part of the standard procedure for performing a BIOS update.

If I were ever to update the BIOS on my DV8 (running trouble-free over a year now on its original F.06E BIOS ! ), I would certainly reset it to its defaults to prevent, as the instructions say, "unpredictable behavior".

If you continue to unnecessarily update the BIOS, I'm sure you won't skip that recommended step in the future. Stay lucky with those updates, tho'!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I discovered 2 ways to fix the wi-fi intermittently turning itself on and off..

Fix 1. remove the keyboard and place electrical tape underneath the touch panel (covering all cables and creating a barrier). This fixed it for me

Fix 2. Buy a external wireless network adapter (like the Rokland N3) and disable your internal adapter. I did this later due how much more powerful the reception and signals were compared to the wimpy internal card.

 

I hope someone chimes in that still has this problem that will try to fix of resetting bios to defaults.

Must be a bios sensitivity setting in the capacitance circuit.

 

Maybe everyone else is following the procedure for updating BIOS that calls for resetting the BIOS to defaults. (Since it's part of an established procedure, I wouldn't call it a "fix" - it's only a "fix" for people who didn't properly follow the BIOS update procedure) :laugh:

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Never thought it was necessary... just simply updated the bios and never had any issues.

 

Like updating the BIOS unless it is absolutely necessary, it's a "roll of the dice" that an artifact will be left in a bad place in the CMOS. Seems like "your number came up" .... Be glad that the "unpredictable behavior" it caused was only an irritation and not something critically serious.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

yes, bios is quite interesting...... once I would see digital blocks just for a blink of a second when I would shutdown... reset the bios and it went away...... interesting....

 

Interesting, yes. Exciting too!

(From my soapbox -) Just think of the risks you run performing the BIOS update in the first place! :laugh:

As I have been saying, I am glad you have been so lucky so far. Hope your luck doesn't ever run out.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

so do you think updating the bios introduces bits of corrupt info each time allowing it to accumiliate with each update, or is it rather a roll of the dice?

I'm a bit confused on the difference in updating verses setting to defaults when it comes to corruption.

If there was corruption introduced during an update... not sure why it would go away when setting things to defaults.

I know the firmware gets rewritten with each update.... just don't understand how setting to defaults helps a "bad" update.

 

Not likely to accumulate though it can't be ruled out. Definitely, a roll of the dice!

Each update rewrites the entire thing and leaves spaces for settings. The artifacts occur when stuff from previous BIOS or settings is left where it can be seen as interpretable information in a setting field.

Setting to defaults copies valid info into every settings field and replaces any artifacts left behind.

Regards,
- - Phil