HP Laptop Wireless button won't change/ turn on orange to blue - Fixed

I've spent a day on this and thought I'd share. Laptop is a HP business laptop 6545b, but this applies to LOTS of HP laptops that use a line of light-up buttons just above the F1-F12 line of function keys, sometimes called Quick Launch buttons. My problem was when the "Wireless" button, with an icon of a wireless antenna on it, would stick at orange (wireless turned off) and wouldn't turn blue (wireless enabled). Windows 10 doesn't know how to fix this by itself. It'll stay stuck at orange. However, if you go into BIOS Setup at startup, and reset the BIOS settings to BIOS Defaults, and reboot, Windows 10 WILL turn on the wireless adaptor; (actually turning OFF Airplane Mode). Airplane Mode, for some reason, makes the adaptor invisible to Windows 10 and also Ubuntu 18.04.1, in my testing, and so no more setting changes can be made. Resetting to BIOS Defaults fixes it though. I'm sure I'm not the only one driven crazy by this Catch-22 behavior, so I hope this can do some good for someone else. - Dave.

Hi Caledon Ken,

Thank you for your interest in my post. I didn't mention it, so you didn't know, but the Windows I am currently running on this device is 32 bit Windows 10. If I were running 64 bit, I would definitely try running that utility, and report back to you my results. I am quite interested in any utility that might "flip that switch" back, so to speak. I had been interested in HP's Connection Manager to do that, but the URL's I've followed to get to that on HP's web site result in not getting to that utility, just a search page. They were for Windows 7 as well, so I wasn't confident that even if I had downloaded and tried it, that it would work. What I find the most interesting is that both Windows 10 and Ubuntu can "get it wrong"; more Ubuntu 18.04.1 than W10. That Linux can, if one turns on Airplane Mode, make the adaptor disappear to the OS. Poof it's gone, and there is no way to get it back from there. Windows 10 is somewhat better. Once the adaptor can "appear" or become visible to W10, Airplane Mode can be exited and re-entered without mishap, so it is somewhat more stable. A sidenote: this laptop was discarded on our institution's "junk pile" by IT as defective due to "No Wireless". I happily rescued/recycled it (two years ago!), and luckily discovered how to restore wireless functionality just the other day.

All The Best,

- Dave.

Caledon Ken said:

Hi Dave.

Wondering if this Wireless Assistant listed for your device would change behaviour.



It is listed under Software Solution for Windows 7 64 bit.