Unable to get wireless working with Win8 on my Dell netbook.

Friends,

I have a Dell netbook that used to run WinXP. Wireless networking used to work fine. I have upgraded its memory and hard disk to ensure that Win8 requirements are met and I installed Win8.

Everything else (display, wired networking, audio & sdcard reader) works fine, except wireless. The driver seems to have installed without any errors, but I can seem to access the wireless device.

My device is: Broadcom BCM431X 802.11 Hybrid Wireless Controller

To ensure that there is nothing wrong with the hardware, I ran a Ubuntu liveusb and things just work fine. For some reason, I am unable to get wireless working in Win8 (like I said, wireless worked just fine in WinXP).

Here are some screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/pxqkb

My problem is that I can't get wireless adapter to do things viz. scan of 802.11 access points. When I pull up the charms bar, the networking icon reads: 'Unavailable'.

The output of ipconfig on my machine looks like:

-START-

C:\Users\bpraveen>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration

Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Ethernet adapter Ethernet:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

C:\Users\bpraveen>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : BeePC

Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :

Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid

IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom 802.11g Network Adapter

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX

DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Ethernet adapter Ethernet:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX

DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-XX

DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No

Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

--END--

Looks like the device driver is installed, but something else is wrong with the control of the Broadcom wireless adapter.

How can I debug this further? Any tools that I can download to probe and get additional logs?

Thanks,

Praveen

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