Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

Sometimes network adapter goes missing

Tags:
  • Laptops
  • Wireless Network
  • Broadcom
  • WiFi
  • Hard Drives
October 14, 2014 10:54:34 AM

I had once accidentally dropped my laptop on the floor and I took it to the repairs, they changed my damaged hard drive and reinstalled my windows 7. Everything worked fine after that except that sometimes my network adapter will go missing. This typically happens after a few hours of use or after a fresh boot. The Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter will not show up in the device manager, only Ethernet controller will remain in the Network adapter tab. I usually have to repeatedly scan for hardware changes or repeatedly reboot my computer to detect the Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter and it usually works fine for a short while before the problem comes back again. I have tried everything, including uninstalling Broadcom 802.11n Network adapter, going to safe mode... nothing works. I thought the built-in Network adapter must have malfunctioned so I tried to connect an external USB wifi adapter. However, even the external wifi adapter sometimes goes missing.

There is also another problem with the network adapter, sometimes if I move my laptop around or even randomly without any cause the connection will turn into limited connectivity, this is usually fixed by troubleshooting or putting computer to sleep, however sometimes this also result in the network adapter to go missing. Sometimes if I troubleshoot or scan hardware changes in device manager when it is in limited connnectivity, the computer will freeze and I will have to force restart.

More about : network adapter missing

!