Networking & Wi-Fi

[singingbird]

My daughter has a L505-S5998 satellite, purchased Nov 2009.  The wifi just stopped working and device manager does not recognize the wifi card, only the ethernet.  I believe it was a Realtek card. IT at her school said the wifi card probably needs to be replaced.  Is this something we can purchase and do ourselves?  I've replaced stuff on my desktop before, but never on a laptop.

[miker643]

Satellite L505-S5998 Specifications

Satellite L505-S5998 Downloads

Let's just try a proper system reset, and see if this brings your WiFi back. Power off the laptop, unplug everything including the AC from the unit, remove the battery, press and hold down the power button for 30 seconds, replace the battery and AC, power on, if you see the Toshiba logo, press the 'F2' key to enter the BIOS Setup, in setup press 'F9' to load setup defaults, press 'F10' to save and exit, then boot into Windows, and see if the WiFi card now appears in Device Manager, if does test the the WiFi connection.

Let us know what happens. Good luck.

Mike

[miker643]

Let's just try a proper system reset, and see if this brings your WiFi back. Power off the laptop, unplug everything including the AC from the unit, remove the battery, press and hold down the power button for 30 seconds, replace the battery and AC, power on, if you see the Toshiba logo, press the 'F2' key to enter the BIOS Setup, in setup press 'F9' to load setup defaults, press 'F10' to save and exit, then boot into Windows, and see if the WiFi card now appears in Device Manager, if does test the the WiFi connection.

Let us know what happens. Good luck.

Mike

[miker643]

Let's just try a proper system reset, and see if this brings your WiFi back. Power off the laptop, unplug everything including the AC from the unit, remove the battery, press and hold down the power button for 30 seconds, replace the battery and AC, power on, if you see the Toshiba logo, press the 'F2' key to enter the BIOS Setup, in setup press 'F9' to load setup defaults, press 'F10' to save and exit, then boot into Windows, and see if the WiFi card now appears in Device Manager, if does test the the WiFi connection.

Let us know what happens. Good luck.

Mike

[miker643]

Let's just try a proper system reset, and see if this brings your WiFi back. Power off the laptop, unplug everything including the AC from the unit, remove the battery, press and hold down the power button for 30 seconds, replace the battery and AC, power on, if you see the Toshiba logo, press the 'F2' key to enter the BIOS Setup, in setup press 'F9' to load setup defaults, press 'F10' to save and exit, then boot into Windows, and see if the WiFi card now appears in Device Manager, if does test the the WiFi connection.

Let us know what happens. Good luck.

Mike

[miker643]

Let's just try a proper system reset, and see if this brings your WiFi back. Power off the laptop, unplug everything including the AC from the unit, remove the battery, press and hold down the power button for 30 seconds, replace the battery and AC, power on, if you see the Toshiba logo, press the 'F2' key to enter the BIOS Setup, in setup press 'F9' to load setup defaults, press 'F10' to save and exit, then boot into Windows, and see if the WiFi card now appears in Device Manager, if does test the the WiFi connection.

Let us know what happens. Good luck.

Mike

[miker643]

Let us know what happens. Good luck.

Mike

[singingbird]

Thanks for responding, Mike.

Have done reset, device manager still only recognizes ethernet and not wireless adaptor.

[miker643]

That's not good. It's likely the WiFi card has failed.

The only way to tell for sure is to perform a Toshiba Recovery and return the unit to its factory default out-of-the-box setup. This is considered the gold standard test on whether you have had an actual hardware failure. You can read up on this starting on page 61 of your User's Guide. Make a set of recovery disks first for emergency purposes, see page 69. Make sure you back up all the user files, music, pictures, favorites, etc, before running the recovery.

If the WiFi card is still not recognized in Device Manager after the recovery, it has failed.

Toshiba Satellite L505-S5998 (PSLU0U-01E002) Laptop Parts List

V000190530 OR V000190550 WiFi Card Part numbers

Satellite L505 Disassembly

Let us know how it turns out. Good luck.

Mike

[singingbird · Accepted solution]

Update

After reading disassembly instructions, knew this was over my head.

A work acquaintance's husband does computer repair, he confirmed that the wireless card had indeed gone bad.

Cable going to the display was also shorting out.  He ordered new cable and card and installed both. 

Everything is now working properly. 

Thanks so much for your quick response, these forums are so much more valuable than manufacturer's support pages!