So my daughter and I get my wife an Eee PC for my wife’s birthday a few month’s back, and the little laptop has been working fairly well ever since. The space bar doesn’t work all that well, and typing got a good bit easier when I picked up a $10 keyboard off of NewEgg, but otherwise, the little 9-incher has worked well for your basic web browsing, email-checking, etc. (technically, it’s an 8.9 in. screen, but who’s counting).
The small laptop worked great up until I decided to run the included Asus Update program to install a newer version of the computer’s BIOS (version 0704). After that, the wireless internet just stopped working. The operating system couldn’t even find the wireless network adapter – as if the wireless hardware had never existed. I search through the Windows Device Manager looking for it, and to see if there were any errors, but as far as Windows was concerned, the built-in WiFi wasn’t there.
Finally, I booted into the BIOS (that was what had changed, after all) by rebooting the computer and immediately pressing the F2 key when the computer first began to start up. That took me to the blue BIOS screen, at which point I found that the WiFi – as well as the web cam – had been disabled. Since that was at a more base level than even the operating system, this explained why Windows didn’t think the wireless card was there. So I enabled the wireless (and the web cam), restarted the computer, and all is well now.
I wanted to share the experience, though, in case any other Eee PC owners run into the same sort of problem. I had scoured the forums and Google in search of a solution, but didn’t find anything that sounded like what we were experiencing. Hopefully that means the little laptops are working just perfectly for everyone else out there. 
12 Comments
Thanks!
Had the same problem, but your tip worked fine!
Best regards
lars
I have just bought an Eee PC 900 and can’t connect to my wireless router. It recognises it but just stays on ‘pending’ There is no error message.
Can anyone help?
If the PC recognizes your wireless router, then you don’t have the issue mentioned here, in this blog post.
You’ll want to see if your wireless router has a password for it (it should, for security). If it does, just ensure that you entered the password correctly on your PC.
Spot on – I’d just had this happen to mine and it had indeed turned the wireless adapter off in the BIOS. No idea why, but the laptop had been sitting around for a fair while unplugged and was completely flat, maybe some parts of the BIOS settings are stored in volatile RAM?
that is very weird. BIOS settings should never be stored in volatile memory. I’m curious to know just how prevalent this sort of thing is…
Thank you very much.
I had the same problem and after hours of puzzeling and googling I found your site and it works!!!!!!
Thanks ever so much!!
Annemieke form The Netherlands
thanks so much you saved me a bunch of frustration!
Thank you for your instructions. It fixed my problem too
Hi,
Thank’s for the hint, also when using eee-buntu’s update mechanism the wireless got deactivated in the bios section.
Thanks a lot!!!
Thank You Thank You Thank You!!!
I’ve been through 2
re installations trying to figure out what causes this problem. Next time it happens, I’ll use your solution………..
thanks had the same problem but now resolved. I find my Eepc very slow on stat up, never was that way when new.Any ideas would be appreciated
Thanks!!!