WiFi functionality has totally disappeared from laptop

Question

I have an HP 14-r003la running Windows 10. The keys on the top (the Fx keys) have additional functions, such as changing the screen brigthness or the volume. F12 happens to be the key that toggles WiFi.

Today I turned the laptop on and the LED on the F12 key was red, so WiFi was disabled. This was confirmed by the fact that Windows was letting me know that no Ethernet cable was connected (i.e. it wasn't looking for wireless networks). I pressed F12 but, to my surprise, this toggled the airplane mode, not the WiFi. I had never come across this absurd behaviour.

Is there another way to toggle WiFi on again?

Things tried:

• If on airplane mode I switch it off manually (i.e. using the task bar), WiFi still doesn't work (the icon where WiFi signal should appear just shows the Ethernet disconnected icon).
• WiFi doesn't appear in the notifications menu either. It's like WiFi has left no trace on the laptop, so I'm thinking that it's not just disabled, but something else happened.

Solution

I've been able to fix this, and I'll add it here as an answer to help future readers, as this seems to be a pretty common issue among HP laptops. With Windows 10, it was very easy to solve the problem once the correct feature was found.

I just went to Windows Settings -> Network & Internet -> Network Reset.

After rebooting, the system was back to normal.

Comments

[Admin]

There are several models with that setting by default. Interestingly I don't have a notebook with such fancy settings and neither of my friends (that I know of) but here in just a matter of days found several similar cases.

[Tyson]

Have you rebooted the laptop from complete power off? Sorry if you think you clarified that already, but when I read “today I turned the laptop on” my brain hears “today I opened my laptop and woke it from sleep state.”

[Boyette Antonsen]

Yes, you can kill a fly with a shotgun but a swatter is enough. And until you change the setting in UEFI keep in mind you need to use FN with functions keys inside a program or Windows.