Laptop wireless keeps switching itself off

[swee'pea99]

My daughter's Viaio has started switching its wi-fi off in mid use. There's a wee on-off switch that's supposed to turn it on, but it makes no difference. Any thoughts on what might be causing it, and/or whether it's definitely a hardware issue?

It's only eight months old, but I know it can be a real shag trying to get stuff done under guarantee, because they tend to say it's because of some dodgy stuff you've downloaded/caught - and to be honest, with my daughter, I don't know what she's been downloading/doing. I've already had to spend one evening getting trojans off it.

Oh, I did a google, which suggested 'maybe it's set to switch itself off to save power' - so I checked and it was so I've changed that so it doesn't - but it's made no difference.

Any suggestions appreciated.

 

[CopperBrompton]

Dodgy switch or dodgy connection is most likely. Intermittent faults are always a pain to diagnose, though.

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks for the response. Just in case it helps someone who finds themselves in a similar situation, I ended up doing a system restore to a few days before it all started going pear-shaped - thus far at least, that seems to have worked. (And it let me stay online long enough to download latest updates to all the anti-nasty progs I have on her pooter, which might hopefuilly prevent a reoccurence.)

 

[Piemaster]

The laptop I'm using now used to drop the wifi connection after about an hours use all the time. Installed Ubuntu and never had a problem since. I had put it down to a poor built-in wifi card but it obviously wasn't. A restore and search for new drivers for the viaio?

 

[Mr Pig]

Try plugging the laptop into the router with a LAN cable, that'll at least let you use it until you get it sorted out.

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks for the suggestions guys - Mr Pig's in particular one of those ones that makes you think d'oh, why didn't I think of that?

 

[solmisation]

The laptop I'm using now used to drop the wifi connection after about an hours use all the time. Installed Ubuntu and never had a problem since. I had put it down to a poor built-in wifi card but it obviously wasn't. A restore and search for new drivers for the viaio?

+1 My GF's laptop was always dropping its wireless connection (Vista), again installed Ubuntu via Wubi, the connection has never dropped once.