Wireless Adapter Suddenly Missing (Windows 7, 64)

Hello,

Welcome to Microsoft Community Forum.

As per the description, I understand that your computer lost Wi-Fi connectivity all of a sudden and network icon at the taskbar says “No connections available”. You tried a number of troubleshooting steps like rebooting, toggling wireless power switch, uninstalling network adapter driver, checking WLAN service etc, but none of them helped you enough to get this problem resolved.

I would appreciate if you can provide us the following information to help us understand the issue better.

1. Were you able to install the network adapter driver after uninstalling?
2. Were you able to see 802.11 adapter in device manager earlier before uninstalling network adapter driver?

Looks like the network adapter driver failed to download and install automatically after uninstalling. If that is the case I would have you download and install the wireless adapter driver manually from adapter manufacturer website and check.

If issue persists, let’s follow the Methods below to check if that works:

First, I would suggest you to run Windows in-built network adapter troubleshooter and check if it reports any error and fixes them.

How do I fix network adapter problems?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-network-adapter-problems#1TC=windows-7

If network troubleshooter does not help try other suggestions in the article like disabling and re-enabling network adapter, resetting the network adapter, uninstalling and reinstalling the network adapter driver again.

You may also refer the article below to check if the computer has all the network settings at its place.  

Wired and wireless network problems.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/network-connection-problem-help#network-problems=windows-7&v1h=win81tab1&v2h=win7tab5&v3h=winvistatab1&v4h=winxptab1

Hope this helps. Please let us know the results, feel free to write us back for any further assistance, we’ll be glad to assist you.

Mann,

The adapter was not listed. I uninstalled the ethernet adapter and re-installed it, but that's all I could do because the 802.11 device was not listed.

I went to the OEM site and downloaded the latest drivers they post there. No luck. I then went to Intel's website, as another online user suggested, and downloaded the driver for the Intel WiFi Link 5100 agn. But the version they post won't install unless you can uninstall the old driver, which I can't do because I can't see the adapter in device manager.

I would run the built-in diagnostics if there was something to run them on. If I just run the general internet connection diagnostics, it just tells me that a network cable is unplugged. Presumably because it can't see the wireless card and, so, assumes I connect only by cable.

Hello,

Thank you for your reply, appreciate the time taken by you in keeping us updated on the status of the issue.

1. Do you use external Bluetooth modem to connect to wi-fi? If yes what is the make and model of the network adapter?
2. Have you checked plugging the 802.11 device to a different port?
3. What happens when you unplug and re-plug the network adapter (dongle) to the computer? Do you get any error message?

Looks like 802.11 (external network adapter) device driver is missing and causing this problem. I would suggest you to unplug and re-plug the external network adapter (modem) and check if it tries to install the modem driver automatically. If it fails to install the driver automatically, I would recommend you to look for 802.11 network adapter driver on their website and install manually.

Hope this works. Please let us know the results. Feel free to write us back for any further assistance, we’ll be glad to assist you.