Hope to get a bit of advice on why my wifi isnt working, Ive exhausted my knowledge, and hope there may be someone on here who can give some good advice on how to fix....

Yesterday, out of the blue, I started my laptop up and it cam back with the internet being not connected, with no connections available. The laptop has a Realtek RTL8191SE wifi card fitted.

Other devices in the house are connected ok to the router wirelessly, and I have internet connectivity with an ethernet cable direct to the router.

I have so far tried.... (with windows firewall enabled and disabled)

Disabling / re-enabling the adapter.

Uninstalling / re-installing the driver. (from HP Support site)

Updating the BIOS (from HP Support site)

Reseating the card.

Used system recovery to go back 2 weeks to when it was working fine.

In device manager, it says the adapter is working correctly, and if I try to set up the wireless connection in the network and sharing center it shows the wireless as having 5 green bars, but when you click it, it gives the small network "Not connected" box in the lower right of the desktop, this also has the wireless icon, showing grey signal bars with a red "X" next to it.

Also in the network and sharing center, when you click "view full map" it says the adapter is not connected.

Really struggling now, so any advice appreciated...

Sometimes you can get a problem with the router being on WPA2 and PSK and nothing else and your wifi card is set for WEP, so if the router is setup for a higher encryption it won't connect,

Probably already done it, but switch your wireless off and on. Usually FN key and a number... And right click the network you want to connect to and re-enter the password.

although other devices connect to your router fine i would still switch your router off for 30 seconds and back on.
give it a good 5 minutes for it start up and initalise then try the laptop again.

Could this be virgin superhub ?
If so I could not resolve the issue and fitted an access point and it worked.

Also to check your laptop has ethernet?
Ping 127.0.0.1

You should get a reply.

Uninstall any internet security also.
Desperate measures I know. But you can always re install the Security again.

Does your f12 key turn wifi on and off?

Thanks for all the replies guys

Many of them I have already tried, I havnt however uninstalled all the internet security yet, just disabled the firewall, so I guess that is the next step.

We are with Sky, and I have checked, and double checked all the settings, even reset to factory, and checked the encryption.

I am a Telecom Engineer, and have a degree in software engineering which is why this has got me a little puzzled as I have exhausted my knowledge, though I work with Unix / Linux machines rather than PC's.

I have also ordered a new Wifi card - £1.50 for a used, tried and tested jobbie - thought it was worth a shot even if just to eliminate the H/W

Don't forget to report back if you solve it as we need closure

Well, I fired it up this morning to try removing the internet security and everything is working fine

I did update the Bios yesterday, and reinstall the wifi driver from the HP site, but I rebooted after reinstalling them and it made no difference. I did leave the laptop connected via ethernet for the rest of the day though.

When I powered up today, I did some auto updates / reconfiguration of windows, and when it booted the wifi adapter was working again.

Unfortunately there is nothing conclusive I can say that fixed it...

ah well least it's working now