[SOLVED] Fresh windows install no network detected

[argyris006]

Hey people. Just recently a friends' laptop had a hard drive failure due to a windows update so we decided to do a fresh install of windows (8.1 x64 bit). The installation went by fine but he accidentally made the install twice because he forgot to switch back the boot priority to the hdd so the bootable usb booted up first and he thought that the first time he made the installation something went wrong. The previous information might prove to unimportant, I just thought I'd mention it in case the duplicate install does somehow prove to be the culprit. Anyway to the matter at hand: The installation was complete and we were greeted by the desktop but when we went to the menu to connect to a wireless network there were no available options. Here's what we've tried so far: we checked the device manager to see if there is a network adapter, there is and the system says that the drivers are updated. We opened command prompt and flushed dns and also netsh winsock reset( not really sure what that does but we saw it online and thought we'd give it a go), we also opened ncpa.cpl and there was no wireless option available, only an ethernet option. We also checked to see if the adapter was off or the laptop was in airplane mode, but none of that was the case. Any ideas? Thank you in advance
TL;DR Fresh windows install on laptop, cannot detect any wireless networks.

 

[vov4ik_il]

Is it present in the device manager? Perhaps it just needs a driver?

 

[argyris006]

Hello I mentioned it is in the device manager. We ended up finding the issue. My friend figured out that the wireless adapter was somehow disabled and hidden in the network connections window so all he did was to enable it and everything worked fine. Thanks though.