Wireless hardware block active without having a hardware block

[Richy13]

Both linux and windows are reporting that my wireless communications is turned off, however my laptop doesnt seem to have any switch to activate/deactivate this, it does have the function button but this I know is set to enable wireless.
Anyone know what could be the problem?
Its a Toshiba Satellite pro l450 with Win7 64bit

[editline]17th June 2013[/editline]

Also does anyone know if a USB WiFi dongle would work even tho the laptop is set to disable wireless comms?

[Missing User]

Sometimes theres a wifi manager software bundled with your laptop have you checked to see if you have this? try typing "wifi" or "wireless" into the search bar in the start menu and see if anything comes up.

[Richy13]

Its a clean windows install, well it was a few months back, the problem I'd it does it when on Linux as well so I doubt its just a software thing

[frankpetrov]

although very rare, it could have simply just stopped working. it's like any other computer compnent and faulty components exist. You could always buy a usb wifi stick to plug in for wifi. you can use it even with your wireless communication turned off as it is separated from that.

[Richy13]

well at the moment I am using my phone's wifi and tethering it via the usb, but that will get annoying after a while.
But could it break even tho it wasnt being used? it just seems weird.
Either way I have another laptop that I was going to chuck so I can take the wireless card out of it and swap them see if that fixes anything

[GiGaBiTe]

[QUOTE=Richy19;41072544]Either way I have another laptop that I was going to chuck so I can take the wireless card out of it and swap them see if that fixes anything[/QUOTE]

If you mean swapping internal wireless adapters, it might not work. Many manufacturers have a secret whitelist embedded in the BIOS of allowed internal wireless cards. If you install a card not in the list, it simply won't work.

But I've had internal wireless cards inexplicably stop working and nothing I did would make them work again, so it isn't uncommon for it to happen.

[Richy13]

When it hapned to you, how did you notice it wasn't working?
Windows can see it and reports it as working fine but it acts as if the wireless cutoff switch was active(even tho it doesn't have one) also swapping then didn't work, windows just said it couldn't start the device, code 10 in the device manager

[GiGaBiTe]

I had much of the same problem you did where toggling it did nothing and it would randomly disappear from the device manager or have the yellow exclamation mark saying it has a problem.