Laptop doesn't recognize wireless adapter after a format - no wifi
 

I recently bought a refurbished ASUS U56E-LB7 and when I received it everything was working fine though it was a bit sluggish due to all the bloatware. What I normally do when I buy a new laptop is do a clean installation of Windows 7 and then download all the drivers. Well after formatting the drive and installing Windows 7 everything works except for Wifi. There's a big X on the wireless LAN icon in the system tray and when I go to device manager I don't see my wireless adapter under Network Adapter. I can connect to the internet via an ethernet cable, it is only wifi that doesn't work.

I've tried downloading the wireless drivers from the ASUS website for my model but nothing works. The installation stops halfway and I get a message saying "The Device may not be present or could have been ejected/unplugged from the system. Insert or Reinsert Now."

I know for a fact that the wifi was working fine when I first got the laptop. This problem started occurring after I reformatted and reinstalled Windows 7.

I've tried googling this problem but haven't been able to find a definitive solution. Tech support was next to useless as well. I don't have recovery disks either because it was refurbished and, quite frankly, I've never encountered this problem with my previous laptops and so I was not expecting this to happen.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Could the wireless be turned off? It's possible, if the wifi is a hard switch on the laptop.

Nope there's no physical switch on this laptop.

What you need to do is go figure out what wireless card the laptop has, download the appropriate drivers (doesn't have to be from ASUS) and install that driver.

Check under "Device Manager" and then "Other" or unknown devices. It should say what it is.

You downloaded the wrong drivers.

If it's not showing up under device manager (not even as an unknown device), there is the off chance that the wifi adapter has suddenly crapped out.

if its not under device manager (as the wifi adaptor or unknown device) then that means its probably not connected to the motherboard, its crapped out, or there is no wifi adapter. If its a refurbished unit you should have some kind of warranty so that you can return the unit.

download Speccy, this basically tells you what hardware you have.

find out what wifi card adapter you have and download the drivers. Windows doesnt have every driver. while your at it, might as well find out what sound and other drivers you need to download and get it all at once.

dump it on a usb and install...

^
thanks but Speccy doesn't detect any wireless adapter which is pretty much the problem I'm having. Dammit.

your username is now ironically appropriate.

lol are you serious... i used Speccy on 2 of my laptops and desktop and it works without a hitch..


well.. do it the old fashion way... Boot into bios and find out what you have..
OR
take off the back cover and find the wifi adaptor.. should be a square unit thats plugged in
OR
look online through the manufacture...

Not anymore I fixed the problem :fuckyea::awwyeah:

lol HG you were right I had the wrong drivers. Through some more googling I wound up at driveridentifier.com which suggested my laptop had the Intel Centrino N1030 driver so I downloaded it and it worked.

Amazing how tech support was telling me I would need to have it serviced. This particular driver isn't even on the freakin ASUS website it's no wonder I tried downloading all the 'wireless' drivers and had no success.

Now that I installed the correct driver, it appears in my device manager...and I'm sure Speccy would pick it up as well now. Earlier Speccy only picked up my ethernet driver and it said there was no wifi.

Anyhow thanks for the help.

99% that it was a wrong driver from the information you told us. Couldn't have been the card dying since you said it was fine until a clean install.

Some laptops will have a sticker underneath it that tells you what wireless card/bluetooth module is installed.

Next time, try checking out what chipset your laptop has. The ASUS U56E line of laptops have the HM65 chipset - Intel® HM65 Express Chipset - Take a look under Wireless Lan section, and you'll see Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1030. ;)

good job chico...