About a week ago I booted up my HP Pavilion dv6000 notebook to find that my wireless adapter wasn't working properly. Immediately I went to flip on the switch, but it was already on. The weird thing was that when I went into the device manager it didn't even show up on the list. I went to the Home Network Center and it can't enable the wireless adapter either. I can flip that switch back and forth and the computer doesn't even recognize anything happening and the light stays orange (instead of blue which it should be)

So I got on my desktop and started looking around on the internet for problems other people were having and saw some things about motherboard failure and other expensive things. I've had my laptop for almost a year and a half now, so my 1 year warranty is up by now. Another thing is that last December I had to send in this laptop to fix the motherboard after it wouldn't boot up at all so I just didn't think that was the problem.

I have all my software up to date, the BIOS is updated and drivers and all that so I don't think that's the problem either.

Now...here's the really weird thing (at least I think it is...)

When I have it plugged in, it starts up fine and the wireless works. When I start it up on battery power, it doesn't work. Now I can have it plugged in just to start the computer up and then unplug it without any problems. It's just when I start it up on pure battery power that it fails. To me, this gives me hope that it's not a motherboard problem or something really bad, but I really don't know.

So if someone can suggest something for me to try or look into I'd appreciate any help I can get. I hope what I wrote makes sense and that I didn't ramble on too much. Thanks!

bucketosand

How about checking/reviewing the power scheme? See if the device is being turned off to save power? Can you restore back to when before you had the issue?

cheers ...

qhn makes an excellent observation based on your description. In the power plan, if you go into the change advanced power settings, you can then go to the wireless options. You can choose between low-medium-max settings on both "plugged in" and "battery" settings. the default on mine, for example, is "plugged in" at max setting, and "battery" at medium setting which works fine. Perhaps your power scheme may have the "battery" wireless option set too low, or at any rate, you can move it up to medium or maximum, and see if that solves your problems!

Based on the fact that you can boot up plugged in, and your wireless works, I am betting that this is the solution.

Thanks for your suggestions. I looked at my advanced power settings and for both "plugged in" and "battery" the wireless adapter is set at "Maximum Performance". Also, I tried to system restore and it always says "no changes were made" or something like that.

I don't know if I mentioned this in my previous post, but there are no usually no problems when I boot up while plugged in. There have been a few occasions when my wireless adapter wasn't found after booting plugged in, and the other way as well...there have been a few occasions when the wireless adapter is found after booting on battery power. It's just that most of the time, when plugged in it will work normally, and on battery power it won't be recognized. I find it quite odd, but I hope someone has had this problem and can help.

Thanks again for your responses, but it must be something else that's the problem.

That being the case, it would appear that the wirelss card (internal) is defective. Certain models in the DV6000 series have had that issue, and even if your notebook is past the normal warrany, you still may be eligible to have it repaired. You should check at HP's support site and see if your specific model is listed.

These models have a huge issue with the WiFi starting to fail. In some rare occasions it is the actual wifi card but most of the time it is an issue with the motherboard but it can be repaired.

In your case, it does sound like some sort of power setting...