How to enable and configure Wi-Fi on a laptop

Many users are often faced with the need to con­nect to the Inter­net via a wire­less net­work, and this is espe­cial­ly nec­es­sary, for exam­ple, while on a beach hol­i­day, where this method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is prac­ti­cal­ly the only way to look into the World Wide Web to com­mu­ni­cate with friends, rel­a­tives or just surf. At the same time, var­i­ous prob­lems often arise dur­ing the estab­lish­ment of a con­nec­tion, as a result of which the team of our pub­li­ca­tion decid­ed to make a detailed guide on how to enable and con­fig­ure Wi-Fi on a lap­top with­out resort­ing to the help of third-par­ty spe­cial­ists.

Wi-Fi activation by various methods

Before try­ing to turn on Wi-Fi, it is advis­able to find out if the appro­pri­ate mod­ule is installed in the lap­top, which can be found in the attached instruc­tions or in the pro­pri­etary tech­ni­cal sup­port ser­vice. If this trans­mit­ter is not includ­ed in the pack­age, then accord­ing to our experts, the only way to con­nect via a wire­less net­work is to pur­chase an inter­nal or exter­nal “Wi-Fi” adapter.

More­over, this device will become indis­pens­able for com­mu­ni­ca­tion of a sta­tion­ary com­put­er with free Inter­net dis­trib­uted by “good” neigh­bors, or for orga­niz­ing joint pay­ment for one tar­iff for sev­er­al peo­ple.

If the Wi-Fi mod­ule is installed, then you must first check its per­for­mance by click­ing on the “Net­work” icon near the Win­dows sys­tem clock, after which a list of con­nec­tions will be dis­played with the inscrip­tion “Wire­less Net­work Dis­abled”, so you need to acti­vate it in the “Net­work Con­trol Cen­ter” , which will be dis­cussed next.

If this item is not in the list, you should try turn­ing on Wi-Fi using the “Fn + F1 … F12” but­ton com­bi­na­tion, which dif­fers depend­ing on the lap­top mod­el, and you can visu­al­ly deter­mine the desired but­ton by the pres­ence of an image on it of a spe­cial icon that indi­cates wire­less net.

Fur­ther, it is advis­able to look for a phys­i­cal Wi-Fi acti­va­tion but­ton on the device itself, which can be locat­ed on the side or bot­tom pan­el.

Often the rea­son for the lack of dis­play of the mod­ule in ques­tion is its deac­ti­va­tion in the “Net­work and Shar­ing Cen­ter”, and you can fix this prob­lem by exe­cut­ing the “ncpa.cpl” com­mand through the win­dow called by the “Win + R” key com­bi­na­tion, where you should click “RMB” on the “Wire­less net­work” icon and select “Enable”.

If all the above meth­ods did not help, then it remains to look for faults through the “Device Man­ag­er”, which you can go to by mak­ing the appro­pri­ate request through the search bar of the Start menu. Here, in the “Net­work adapters” sec­tion, it is enough to right-click on the name with the words “Net­work Adapter” and click “Enable” if the icon is high­light­ed in gray, but if a yel­low excla­ma­tion mark is dis­played next to such an icon or there is sim­ply an inscrip­tion “Unknown device “, you will need to install soft­ware that can be down­loaded from the offi­cial web­site of the man­u­fac­tur­er or through third-par­ty plat­forms, such as “Dri­ver Pack Solu­tion”.

Accord­ing to our experts, it is impor­tant to under­stand that after per­form­ing all the above manip­u­la­tions, the absence of a Wi-Fi mod­ule in the “Device Man­ag­er” list may indi­cate that it is bro­ken or dis­abled through the “BIOS”, in which it is bet­ter not to change the set­tings your­self with­out a cer­tain qual­i­fi­ca­tion in order to avoid fail­ure of the lap­top hard­ware due to incor­rect set­tings. As a result, at this stage, we rec­om­mend con­tact­ing com­put­er equip­ment repair spe­cial­ists or using the very first method described in this mate­r­i­al, espe­cial­ly since the price of the issue is less than call­ing the mas­ter.

How to set up a connection

If you man­aged to turn on the Wi-fi adapter, you can start set­ting up the con­nec­tion itself, for which you need to click “LMB” on the icon in the sys­tem tray, and then select the desired Wi-Fi net­work name from the list. At the next stage, by click­ing on the name, you need to click “Con­nect”, after which the sys­tem will request the secu­ri­ty key that the own­er of the router sets, and then you will be prompt­ed to make the com­put­er vis­i­ble on the net­work or refuse it.

It is advis­able to enable the lat­ter option when plan­ning to use shared fold­ers to exchange files with oth­er clients of this net­work, but if the con­nec­tion takes place in a pub­lic place, for exam­ple, in a restau­rant, then it is bet­ter to refuse this func­tion, due to the pos­si­ble copy­ing of impor­tant infor­ma­tion from the user’s lap­top by strangers.

If every­thing is done cor­rect­ly, the con­nec­tion sta­tus will change to “Con­nect­ed”, after which Inter­net access will appear.

Solving common problems

Many users some­times encounter unusu­al dif­fi­cul­ties when set­ting up Wi-fi, as a result of which our experts decid­ed to con­sid­er the most com­mon such sit­u­a­tions.

1. 1. the wire­less mod­ule can be enabled in var­i­ous ways described above, but if the Inter­net is unavail­able, you should first check the oper­at­ing sys­tem for mali­cious soft­ware, for exam­ple, on the web­site
      https://www.drweb.ruand then it is advis­able to rein­stall the brows­er to reset all set­tings

       

1. 1. some­times the required net­work dis­ap­pears in the con­nec­tion list due to the inclu­sion of a spe­cial hid­den mode func­tion on the router, but if you know its data, then you need to click “Con­nect” in the “Hid­den net­work” sec­tion, after which you will need to accu­rate­ly enter the name and pass­word

       

1. 1. in case of los­ing the pass­word from your router, you should not wor­ry, since you can quick­ly access it by find­ing the “WPS” func­tion but­ton, which can be locat­ed any­where on the modem case. After press­ing it and hold­ing it for about three sec­onds, this con­nec­tion will appear on the lap­top, in which you will need to enter the fac­to­ry pass­word, usu­al­ly writ­ten on the body of the device, but if it is not there, you can press “WPS” once again, after which pass­word­less login with access to modem set­tings

       

1. 1. lap­top own­ers often notice a con­stant inter­rup­tion in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the router after the lap­top has been idle for sev­er­al min­utes, as a result of which they have to con­stant­ly man­u­al­ly recon­nect the con­nec­tion, which is extreme­ly incon­ve­nient. Accord­ing to our experts, the main cause of this prob­lem is the enabled pow­er sav­ing mode, and to fix this, you need to go to the “Device Man­ag­er” by cre­at­ing a request in the “Start” menu, click “RMB” — “Prop­er­ties” on the icon of the required device in the “Net­work Adapters” sec­tion “, select the “Pow­er Man­age­ment” tab and uncheck “Allow the com­put­er to turn off this device to save pow­er”. After these manip­u­la­tions, the prob­lem should dis­ap­pear, but it hap­pens that this hap­pens due to hard­ware mal­func­tion or incor­rect dri­vers.

       

Thank you for your atten­tion, we hope the infor­ma­tion from our mate­r­i­al helped you!