Question Laptop's WiFi capabilities have vanished ?

[mdifonzo1301]

This may be the wrong thread forum for it but I'll cross that road when I get to it. Recently I came back home to find out my parent's laptop no longer supports wifi. The laptop can only access the internet when connected via ethernet. This is strange since her laptop always had wifi capabilities and only started having this issue about 2 months ago. It's an
HP ENVY m6-1225dx

As far as I'm aware, the story is as follows. My parent one day saw that she was no longer connected to the internet and that her wifi capabilities with the laptop ceased to exist. She plugged in the ethernet cable I had already attached to the router before I left to at least get some functionality. I checked her laptop and found that when not connected to ethernet, the laptop says "Not connected - no connections available". It doesn't give me the option of choosing a network via wifi or display and networks to connect to. When connected to ethernet, it no longer even shows our network name. In windows 10 settings, the wifi settings have disappeared altogether. Once again no networks display to connect to. In the adapter properties via network connections, no wifi options exist to enable. There is only bluetooth, ethernet, and lan.

In the device manager, there are no network adaptors present even while files are unhidden, only the microsoft kernal debug network adaptor shows. I may be mistaken but I believe the wifi card/chip is a Ralink RT 5390, and I have unplugged and reseated the antenna cables and chip several times to no avail. I tried reinstalling the drivers for the ralink wifi chip but again I'm running into the problem of I cannot even get the wifi chip to show up anywhere. The chip itself and the antenna's didn't appear to have any visible damage whatsoever, and there really shouldn't be any problems with it since I know my parent or myself has never dropped it or harmed the laptop physically in any manner.

The only lead that I have going for me is that when I saw the laptop, I might be mixing the two up but a broadband or dial up connection was established but never properly connected or anything like that as far as I was aware, considering wifi or whatever couldn't be used to search anything, ( I don't exactly know how that process works since I've never used broadband or dial-up). From there I saw an option to remove the broadband or dial up connection and I did since I thought maybe that may be the reason why the laptop lost the wifi capabilities? It was removed successfully, as far as I'm aware anyways but still no luck. I've reset my wifi connections via windows 10 settings, winsock settings, etc but still no luck. Any advice? I don't see this being a hardware issue but in the worst possible case all I would do is simply buy the same wifi card and assumingly the issue would be fixed or something?

 

[Lutfij]

First see if the laptop is pending any BIOS updates, using CPU-Z, check and see what your current BIOS version is listed as under Mainboard 's tab. Does the WiFi adapter show up in Device Manager with a yellow exclamation mark?

I don't see this being a hardware issue
it could be since the adapter you've mentioned above does not have BlueTooth on it, only WiFi functionality, or so that's what my research says.

 

[mdifonzo1301]

I'm not exactly sure how to tell if it has any pending bios updates. I checked HP's website and it was able to see my device model but the bios update within there is not compatible with this system so. Bios version: Insyde v F.25 from 01/21/2013.

No whether I show the hidden devices or not the wifi adaptor doesn't display under device manager period. In the event of a hardware issue, would it be as simple as purchasing the same wifi card/chip, connecting the antennas, and would it be straight plug and play would you happen to know? Or would it somehow have to undergo software checks to get it to show up within windows?

Edit: it seemed like it found the potential to update the bios version to f.26 but now the laptop won’t even boot so I fairly bricked it. Fans instantly start and die every few seconds. Black screen. Doesn’t look like it has any bios options or anything to work with.

Edit #2: I don't ever do bios updates and don't have experience with them. after some combination finagling removing the cmos battery, the ram, ssd, etc. eventually it was able to clear up the bios image is what I think it said, since it was so quick. It was able to boot fine this time and cpuz confirms the bios to be updated to the newer f.26 version. Still the same issues persists, I'm going to assume it just needs a new wifi chip. But again if you happen to know about if its a simple plug and play installation or something more complex, it would be appreciated.