Turn on Wi-Fi. Enabling Wi-Fi Wi-Fi on a Windows 10 laptop

For a long time I couldn’t come up with a good title for this article, so that it would be clear what it was about, and so that you could easily find it if you have problems with Wi-Fi in Windows 10. Now we will try to figure out why there is no Wi-Fi button in Windows 10 Where to look for wireless network settings, how to turn on Wi-Fi and why this problem occurs. I'll tell you about the error "We couldn't find wireless devices on this computer" in Windows 10.

I’ll say right away that when you can’t find “Wi-Fi” on your laptop (no power button, no item in settings, etc.), then most likely you simply do not have the Wi-Fi driver installed, you do not have a Wi-Fi receiver, or it is turned off. Let's look into everything in detail.

The essence of the problem:

The whole problem is that we cannot connect to a Wi-Fi network on Windows 10. I already wrote. But, when we open the connection management window, there is simply no control button for the Wi-Fi adapter.

If we go to the settings, to the network parameters, we also won’t find the item there "Wi-Fi". And on the tab Airplane mode we will see the error highlighted "We couldn't find any wireless devices on this computer" .

This problem could mean that:

Your computer simply does not physically have a Wi-Fi receiver. If you have a laptop, then it should have a built-in wireless adapter. On your computer, you can use an external Wi-Fi receiver. If you are absolutely sure that your computer has Wi-Fi (we used it before installing Windows 10, looked at the specifications, connected an external receiver, etc.), then you need to check other reasons.
The driver for the Wi-Fi adapter is not installed. In some article I already wrote that Windows 10 itself installs the driver for wireless adapters. But not always. And these drivers do not always work as they should. Therefore, the most common reason for such problems with Wi-Fi in Windows 10 is the lack of a wireless adapter driver, or an inappropriate driver.
Well, it may be that The wireless network adapter is simply disabled. I just checked, turned it off, the “symptoms” of the problem are exactly the same as I described above.

One small nuance. You probably know that your laptop has a keyboard shortcut to turn wireless networks on and off. On my Asus, for example, these are the keys Fn+F2. In Windows 10, these keys are responsible for turning Airplane mode on and off. If you have an “airplane” icon on your notification panel instead of the Internet icon, then simply disable this mode using the keys on your laptop, or by clicking on the icon itself and turning off the “Airplane” mode.

In any case, you can check the keyboard shortcut on your laptop, maybe it will help. For different manufacturers, these combinations may be different. Typically, this is the Fn key + the antenna icon key.

Let's check and fix it.

No Wi-Fi on a Windows 10 laptop: problem solving

Let's first check whether the Wireless Network adapter is turned on, and if you don't have this adapter at all, then let's make sure that the problem is in the driver, or in the absence of this adapter in your computer at all.

Right-click on the Internet connection icon in the notification bar and open Network and Sharing Center. In the new window, select Change adapter settings.

If you see an adapter there "Wireless network" (Or something like that), and it is disabled, then right-click on it and select Turn on. After this, Wi-Fi should appear on your laptop and you can connect to the wireless network.

If there is no “Wireless Network” adapter at all, then, as I wrote above, your computer most likely does not have a Wi-Fi driver installed. Or it is installed, but does not work stably.

Problems with the Wi-Fi adapter driver in Windows 10

We need to go to the device manager and see what's there. Is there a wireless adapter and how does it work? To do this, click on the menu Start and select .

At the bottom of the page go to device Manager.

In Device Manager, open the tab Network adapters. Usually there are two adapters: LAN - for connecting the Internet via a network cable (network card), and a wireless adapter. As a rule, the name of the wireless adapter contains the word "Wireless". This is what the Wi-Fi adapter looks like in Device Manager on my laptop:

As you can see, the name indicates the manufacturer and model. If you have the adapter in device manager and it is enabled (I showed how to check above), but you still can’t turn on Wi-Fi, then try updating the driver for your adapter. Or, try performing the operations with the adapter that I wrote about in the article.

If there is no driver, or the adapter itself is missing, then you won’t see it in the device manager either.

But, please note that if there is no adapter in the manager (and in a computer, laptop it is), then in the device manager there should be at least one "Unknown device", as in my screenshot. In this case, you need to try installing the driver for the Wireless adapter.

How to install or update the Wi-Fi adapter driver?

If you have a laptop, then go to the manufacturer’s official website, through the search, or through the menu, look for your model, there find the section with driver downloads, and look for the driver for the Wireless adapter. Please note that there will most likely be an option to select your operating system. Select Windows 10. If there is no driver for Windows 10, you can try selecting Windows 8 (8.1). Also, the driver may be on a disk, which usually comes with the laptop. (but it’s unlikely there will be a driver for “ten”).

Save the driver to your computer and simply start installing it. If you downloaded the archive, then the archive should contain an installation file that you just need to run and follow the instructions. After installation, restart your laptop and try connecting to the Wi-Fi network (Wi-Fi must be turned on).

If you have a desktop computer with a USB/PCI adapter, then look for the driver on the website of the adapter manufacturer itself. According to the adapter model. Well, you should have a driver disk.

As for updating the driver, we do everything the same as in the case of installation: find it, download it to your computer, and install it.

And further...

By the way, after installing the driver on the wireless adapter, when it works, you can - a very useful thing.

Share your results in the comments, ask questions, and I will try to supplement this article with new information on solving this problem with Wi-Fi on the “top ten”.

On drive C I turned on the search and found the wireless LAN folder

C:\eSupport\eDriver\Software\WirelessLan\Qualcomm Atheros\WirelessLan\10.0.0.342\2886\

There are two files there: Setup. I started both of them and everything returned to normal.

If it helps anyone, thanks to Konstantin!

Update: WLAN Service

Check if the WLAN AutoConfig service is running on your computer. I showed how to do this.

Update: Windows Event Log Service

A working solution appeared in the comments, which is that you need to enable the Windows Event Log service. Let's go to services (you can press Win+R and run the command services.msc).

Find the Windows Event Log service and open its properties (by right-clicking on it). We check whether the startup type is set to “Automatic” and whether the service itself is running. If not, click on the “Run” button. You can try stopping it and starting it again.

Share your solutions in the comments! Ask questions.

Before setting up a wireless access point, make sure that you have an Internet connection and a working Wi-Fi adapter.

How to enable wireless hotspot in Windows 10 settings

To set up a wireless access point in Windows 10, you can do without special programs or entering commands into the console. All you need to do is make a couple of clicks in Settings.

In the Start menu, click on the Settings gear → Network and Internet → Mobile hotspot.

In “Internet Connection Sharing”, specify the connection through which the computer accesses the Internet. For example, Ethernet.

Under the network data, click on “Edit”.
In the form that opens, specify the network name and password - users will enter them to connect. Save them.

At the top of the page, turn on “Allow other devices to use my Internet connection.”

Ready. Using the network name and password, you can connect up to eight devices to the hotspot. And you can turn off Internet distribution in the same place where wireless communication is turned off - in the “Network” window on the taskbar.

And a little life hack: to prevent the hotspot from running idle, you can launch it remotely from another device. The function is activated in the same access point settings and works if you turn on Bluetooth on both devices and connect them to each other.

What to do if the mobile hotspot on Windows 10 does not turn on

And here comes the most interesting part. Configuring a wireless access point in the parameters is very simple in theory, but in practice, the system gives one of the errors to many users.

The author, for example, got “Unable to set up a mobile hotspot. Turn on Wi-Fi." Judging by Google queries and forum threads, this problem occurs frequently and its cause may lie in the Wi-Fi adapter driver.

There are several options to solve the problem.

Reset settings: “Network and Internet” → “Status” → “Reset network”.
Remove the Wi-Fi driver and download a new one from the manufacturer’s website. If the manufacturer has not released drivers for Windows 10 (as is the case with the author's five-year-old laptop), you can download a driver for Windows 8.
See if the Microsoft Virtual Adapter is listed in Device Manager and enable it.
Ignore all this and set up a hotspot in .

How to set up a wireless access point via the Windows 10 command line

If the easy way didn’t work, then this one will most likely help distribute the Internet.

Right-click on the “Start” button, in the menu that opens, select “Command Prompt (Administrator)” and enter the following commands into it one by one.
- netsh wlan show drivers- to find out whether the Wi-Fi device supports distribution. In the text that appears in the window, find the line “Support for a hosted network” and make sure that it says “Yes”. If "No", try reinstalling or rolling back the driver and try again.

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Stacy key=4419E1z#- to create a hot spot. Only instead of Stacy And 4419E1z# Enter your network name and password.
netsh wlan start hostednetwork- to start the wireless access point.

Right-click on the “Start” button again, select “Network Connections” → right-click on the active connection → “Properties”.

Open “Access”, check the box “Allow other network users to use this computer’s Internet connection.” And in the field below, select the number ending with “Local Area Connection...”.

That's it, now you can connect your device to the hotspot, just like any Wi-Fi source: select your network from the list of available ones, enter the password and use it.

You can turn off Internet distribution with the command netsh wlan stop hostednetwork.

If your computer is equipped with a Wi-Fi module, you can easily enable Wi-Fi on your Windows 10 device. We will tell you how to do this as simply as possible, and how to use it effectively.

All builds of Windows 10 support wireless connections. Therefore, the question of how to enable Wi-Fi on your device with such a system should certainly have a solution. The new OS from Microsoft has received many innovations. And one of them was a change in the principles of turning on a wireless network and connecting to it. If you perceive such innovations negatively, then after a while your opinion will probably change, since this is actually an improvement. The point is that you will eventually understand - the new way of turning on the adapter has become better.

Trying to turn on Wi-Fi in a laptop on Windows 10

If you have used a mobile phone before, you probably saw an icon there that appeared after this device began to receive a signal from the wireless network. There is something similar to this in the “top ten”. If you look closely at the bottom right corner, you will find the exact same image. Click on it and you will see settings for some wireless connections, and the signal strength from each of them will be shown. If you know the password for any network from this list, then you will be able to connect to it.

But it happens that in this way you will not be able to connect to the Network, since your module is not currently working. Or it's simply missing. We will not discuss physical problems in this article, but we can talk about some software settings.

If you want to connect to wireless network connections, then you need to open the Network Sharing Center on your laptop and go to the wireless adapter settings. Although it may turn out that it just needs to be turned on. After all, if all the necessary drivers are installed on the device, and the module itself is working properly, then there should be no problems with the connection.

It happens that turning on Wi-Fi in a laptop on Windows 10 is possible only after the drivers in the system are updated. So if you can download them from the device manufacturer’s website, then all your problems will be solved.

Common reasons why the wireless connection does not work

Wireless connections may not work for the following reasons:

No adapter included;
Incorrect driver settings or outdated versions in the system;
Disabling the adapter using software methods;
The adapter itself is physically missing or it is broken.

Of course, this is an incomplete list, and it can be expanded ad infinitum. But these are the most common reasons. Moreover, from this list we can identify the most common causes of problems.

The first is that the computer does not have the required module. Whether it exists can be seen using or using .

The second is that you don’t have drivers. Of course, this is trivial, but many, unfortunately, forget to install them and then the device does not work. Don't make this mistake and install all supporting software.

We hope that you will not encounter any of the problems listed above, because you have been warned about them, which means you are armed. Moreover, you now also know how to enable Wi-Fi on any Windows 10 device, which means that you most likely will not have any problems. And if it happens, write in the comments, we’ll watch and figure it out together.

Useful programs for Windows 10

The article discusses ways to distribute the Internet via the Wi-Fi module of your laptop or PC (with a connected Wi-Fi adapter) running the Windows 10 operating system. We suggest taking advantage of the system’s hardware capabilities, which do not require installation and configuration of additional programs that are not included in the standard OS Windows kit.

Checking the possibility of distributing Wi-Fi

To do this you will need:

Launch the command line in Windows 10 with administrator rights. Right-click on the “Start” button and select the appropriate item in the menu that opens;

in the dialog box that opens, enter the command netsh wlan show drivers;
in the information that appears, find the line Hosted Network or “Hosted Network Support”, and check that the line opposite the line is “Yes”;

otherwise, update the Wi-Fi adapter drivers by visiting the website of the laptop or device manufacturer. Repeat the steps described above and make sure that the driver allows you to distribute the Internet via Wi-Fi.

In some configurations, rolling back the device driver to a previous version may help. Go to the device manager, in the “Network adapters” subsection, find the required device, go to the driver tab, roll back.

If manipulations with the drivers do not give the required result, contact the laptop manufacturer's service center.

Setting up Internet distribution using the command line

Using this tool is the easiest way to configure the required connection type. Let's start:

run command prompt again as administrator;
enter the command netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=mywifi key=mypassword . The ssid value will set the name for your network, and key will be the access password. Please note that the password must be entered in Latin and contain at least 8 characters;
enter the command netsh wlan start hostednetwork . If you did everything correctly, the system will respond with a notification that the network has started.

If you do not see any error messages, you will be able to connect devices to the network, but to access the Internet you will need to perform a few more steps, which we will discuss later.

If Windows 10 gives you an error message, try the following steps:

Turn off and, after restarting the laptop, turn on the adapter again in the device manager.
Alternatively, remove the Wi-Fi adapter and update the system configuration.
In the “Network Adapters” tab, using the “View” menu, enable the display of hidden devices. Find the virtual adapter, and if it appears inactive, enable it through the right-click menu.

I connect to the network, but Internet access is blocked, what should I do?

To allow Internet access to devices connected to your laptop via Wi-Fi in Windows 10:

go to the “Network Connections” tab;
select the network connection used by the system to access the Internet;
In the “Access” tab, check the box that allows other network devices to use the connection.

In most cases, after this you will be able to use the Internet distributed via Wi-Fi from the Windows 10 operating system.

Do you need to disconnect your network? Enter the command netsh wlan stop hostednetwork in a command prompt running with administrator rights.

Known issues and solutions

If you strictly followed the instructions, but distributing the Internet via Wi-Fi from a computer running Windows 10 still doesn’t work, try:

disable Internet distribution via Wi-Fi, then the connection used to access the Internet and restart them;
manually enter the IPv4 parameters and subnet mask in the created connection using the template 192.168.173.*., where * is replaced with a number for each new device, and the mask is 255.255.255.0;
Make sure that the firewall of your antivirus software running on a Windows 10 system is not blocking the general network connection. Check by disabling your antivirus program and trying to access the network from a tablet or smartphone;
check whether you have shared access to the same network;
repeat all steps of the instructions.

Congratulations! You just learned how to distribute the Internet via Wi-Fi using a device running Windows 10.

You can turn off Wi-Fi to save battery power on an airplane or other place where there is no Wi-Fi. With the Windows 10 Creators Update, you can now automatically turn on Wi-Fi by restarting your computer.

On the taskbar

This option is only available in the Windows 10 Settings app and the taskbar network menu. You won't see this option if you disable your Wi-Fi interface through the old Network Connections interface in Control Panel.

To turn off Wi-Fi from the taskbar, click the Wi-Fi icon in the notification area next to your clock and click the Wi-Fi button to turn it off.

If your Wi-Fi is set to Off, you can turn it on in 1 hour, 4 hours or 1 day - just like in the Settings app. The default option is “Manual” which means you need to click on the “Wi-Fi” icon in this menu to turn Wi-Fi back on.

Unfortunately, this option is not available when Airplane Mode is enabled. If you want to automatically turn on Wi-Fi, you need to turn off Wi-Fi rather than turn on Airplane Mode.

In the Settings menu

Go to Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi. Set Wi-Fi connection to "Off" Here you can set automatic Wi-Fi connection after 1 hour, 4 hours or 1 day. The Manual option means that Windows will not automatically turn on Wi-Fi. You will have to do this yourself.