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What does it mean if I can use the internet with the ethernet cable connected to the laptop but it doesn't detect any wireless networks when it's unplugged???
It means your laptop isn't detecting any wireless networks within range. Either there are in fact none or your wifi is turned off.
then what does it mean if the wifi i turned on and there is a wireless networks, actually networks and it doesn't detect none of them but it connects to the internet using an ethernet cable? all of the network drivers required are already installed
How old is the laptop? I had a Toshiba Windows Vista laptop that things like wifi just quit working after about 2.5-3 years. It was software or OS issues, not hardware failures. The laptop detected no wifi networks. Thinking the internal wifi card went bad, I bought an external Netgear USB adapter and installed the software for that. As soon as I plugged in the USB wifi adapter, the internal wifi woke up again and worked ok afterward.
What I ended up doing with that machine (because it got even flakier later) was copied off my data, made sure I created 2 sets of recovery disks first (in case the recovery partition was corrupted, which it was not.) Then I restored the laptop to factory out of box and applied all of the Windows updates, and put my data back. The laptop ran like new after that.
Another of my Toshibas (Windows 7 Home) developed similar issues, except it could see networks and would connect but then would have no Internet access. I got a new SSD hard drive for it and used recovery disks to set it up as factory outta box, then applied Windows updates. Works great. The SSD is a really nice upgrade.
Summary: I think they need a wipe-and-reinstall sometime around the 2 year mark.
Forgot to say: Some computers have an actual hardware slider switch to turn the wifi off. Some have software that switches the internal wifi adapter on/off. Check whether your wifi is enabled or disabled. But those 2 machines I mentioned had wifi on and Windows thought it was working correctly, but it wasn't.
Forgot to say: Some computers have an actual hardware slider switch to turn the wifi off. Some have software that switches the internal wifi adapter on/off. Check whether your wifi is enabled or disabled. But those 2 machines I mentioned had wifi on and Windows thought it was working correctly, but it wasn't.
I was going to mention that - you beat me to it. My older Sony has a slide switch on the front left edge - not labeled or anything. First, I didn't even know it was there, and second, when I found it I didn't know what it was for and googled looking for a labeled diagram that showed all the external slots-ports-switches.
Living2015 - by chance does your laptop have a slider?
Also as SorryIMovedBack suggests, look to see if your networking software has wifi turned off.
Control Panel/System/Device Manager and click on Network Adapters so the items in it show up.
Any icons to the left of a component?
Is there a WiFi adapter listed?
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