-1

I have this Toshiba Satellite laptop (P855-33D) that has inexplicably switched off the wireless card and I cannot find a way to turn it on again.

It all started when I attempted to change the wireless card: one of the cables took apart the pin from the card (it is a used laptop, I have no idea how this happened), so I had to mount in another one, but it never worked. The computer has Windows 10 as its main OS, and the menu that opens with the Wi-Fi icon in the appbar says that Wi-Fi is off, and gives a menu to auto reenable it after a given time. The button in the same menu to turn on Wi-Fi goes grey after 1 click.

I have found a lot of similar posts across the web, but nothing helped. The obvious keyboard combo (fn+F12 on this laptop) has no effects. I have flashed an updated BIOS and reset settings to default. I have tried unplugging the AC adapter, the main battery and the BIOS battery (I actually had to unsolder it), pressing the power button for 30sec., and restarting, but it didn't help. Every setting and diagnostic in Windows is pretty useless (although I did not know how to launch the diagnostic tool as an admin - this worked for one person).

rfkill list in Linux (Ubuntu live cd) says that the device is hard-blocked, so obviously rfkill unblock all doesn't help. Ubuntu disables also the USB connected Wi-Fi dongle for the same reason, even if rfkill says it is not blocked. If I remove the Wi-Fi card, the USB dongle connects fine.

Since the previous card was broken by one of the cables, I tried using the cables from an other laptop, but it behaves the same way. I have also tried another Wi-Fi card, an older 802.11 b/g (both are Broadcom, the broken one is a Realtek). I tried updating/reinstalling drivers, but given its behavior under Linux I am pretty sure that it won't help. The laptop was bought used without an OS, so Windows has no OEM bloat/software. I am mentioning this because one person managed to get it working by running a little program saved in the Toshiba directory of his Windows install. One of the hinges is broken (mentioning this because of these comments, I have no idea of how this should influence the computer operation, the laptop has worked fine for years). The BIOS does not have a setting to enable Wi-Fi, and I am pretty sure that there is not an actual physical switch like on other Toshiba laptops (I have even downloaded the manual to be sure).

I have probably tried other things too, which I can't recall at the moment. I just don't know what else to try, so I am asking here as a last resort. Hope someone can help, I appreciate it.

Improve this question
3
  • Perhaps try installing an identical Realtek card? I know for a fact that laptops can have wireless-LAN card whitelists (my own T430 had one and I had to modify the BIOS to use an AC card) so maybe your laptop still boots with a different card, but just disables it instead?
    – QuickishFM
    Commented Mar 9, 2019 at 22:25
  • Interesting point. Also my laptop (an HP) had a whitelist that I had to work around. But it wouldn't even boot with an unrecognized card so I did not think of it as a possible cause. Maybe I will try to plug the damaged card back in, if you are right it should probably just show a different error caused by the lack of one cable. Thank you for the input.
    – itsmeciao
    Commented Mar 9, 2019 at 22:31
  • It appears that the machine behaves as expected with its original network card. Later today I am going to try and mod the BIOS to remove the whitelist. I will write a short answer if I succeed. Thank you for the tip @QuickishFM.
    – itsmeciao
    Commented Mar 11, 2019 at 12:55

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

It turns out that a BIOS PCIe whitelist is (maybe) not the culprit. According to several people over at bios-mods.com, whitelists simply report an error upon boot and arrest the boot process, and AMI BIOSes like the Aptio in this machine generally do not implement whitelists.

I have found a thread that "explains" the role of pin 20 of mPCIe devices in triggering the hard-switch. By covering this pin, the mPCIe card cannot receive power from the MoBo and thus the block cannot be triggered. The card started working by simply covering pin 20 with electrical tape.

One thing that is still unclear to me is why the system is attempting to block the card, if not because of a whitelist: I have tried to plug in the damaged original card that came with the machine, and it didn't block it. If someone has any idea of why this happens, I'd love to know. Thank you.

Improve this answer
1
  • My own upgraded card (an Intel 7260) has Bluetooth, and some people report problems with this so they have to stop the connection using tape too. I've also heard that some cards use a/b/g/n bands that can make the reception worse, and covering certain pins will stop those bands and allow it to perform better. While I don't have a certain answer, this might steer you into the right direction. I would guess that the slot can be used for other devices, and since different WLAN cards aren't officially supported, the mobo may be designed to block the usage of the card if that pin draws a current...
    – QuickishFM
    Commented Mar 11, 2019 at 21:37

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .