[basitj]

I have this Playbook that wasn't more than a month old. It was working just great and one fine morning the wifi stopped working. Yeah, it just died. I've tried all of the following:

* Restarted the playbook, no use
* Turned the wifi on and off, no use
* Tried 20 different wifi routers, no use
* Tried connecting manually to wifi, no use
* Used different security types, keys, an non secure networks, no use

It actually fails to see ANY networks at all.

Quite interestingly, at times when you click the wifi? icon on wifi settings, it fails to show the physical address as well ( a few times it does end up showing the physical address. )

Following screenshot shows no physical address :


On another instance, the physical address is there:


The playbook is running 1.0.3.1868 .

Can somebody suggest me a solution here? I was thinking of ripping open the playbook to see whats wrong? I feel there may be some ribbon cable loose or something.

BTW, ever since the wifi is dead, the playbook eats up all the battery pretty soon (more than double battery consumption).

I'd love to hear back some solid suggestions to solve the issue.

Thanks

[Manic99]

You do realize that the PB OS is running at 1.0.7.2670. Have you tried to update OS? Best of Luck to you.

[Schlymer]

I have this Playbook that wasn't more than a month old. It was working just great and one fine morning the wifi stopped working. Yeah, it just died. I've tried all of the following:

* Restarted the playbook, no use
* Turned the wifi on and off, no use
* Tried 20 different wifi routers, no use
* Tried connecting manually to wifi, no use
* Used different security types, keys, an non secure networks, no use

It actually fails to see ANY networks at all.

Quite interestingly, at times when you click the wifi? icon on wifi settings, it fails to show the physical address as well ( a few times it does end up showing the physical address. )

Following screenshot shows no physical address :


On another instance, the physical address is there:


The playbook is running 1.0.3.1868 .

Can somebody suggest me a solution here? I was thinking of ripping open the playbook to see whats wrong? I feel there may be some ribbon cable loose or something.

BTW, ever since the wifi is dead, the playbook eats up all the battery pretty soon (more than double battery consumption).

I'd love to hear back some solid suggestions to solve the issue.

Thanks

What ever you do, don't break open the playbook. My guess is that you have a software problem, but if it is a hardware problem, RIM will fix it free of charge under a 1 year parts and labor warrentee. What I would do is download blackberry desktop manager on your pc if you don't have the latest version of that.

Next connect the playbook with the micro usb cable and open open up your desk top manager and back up your playbook. When it is finnished backing it up, restart the playbook and when the playbook restarts, a pop up box appears and gives you three choices. The middle one lets you reload the latest OS. This is a clean install of the latest 1.0.7.2670 and if the clean install of the OS doesn't fix it, then you are right and have a faulty wifi connection.

The process to clean install the OS takes about 90 minutes. The back up you will do before this, will take between 20 minutes to 4 hours, depending if you have used up your 64GB of memory on the playbook. I hope this is the fix for you. Keep us posted.


It looks like by your screen shots you are still running the old 1.0.3 OS. I am sure that it will fix more than your wifi as there have been several other updates since then. You will have a brand new factory like playbook.

[basitj]

Thanks for the reply. While your answer has a potential solution that i dont mind trying ( starting the process right now ) but I wonder why this could start working for no reason while the same OS was running wifi pretty well.

Moreover, what could eat up more battery?

I'll respond back once i'm done updating OS.

Thanks

[Schlymer]

One thing to make sure you do as soon as the OS is loaded, is open up the video chat app and accept the license agreement. If you don't, this causes a battery drain. The 1.0.3.1868 was a dog of an OS. We have had 4 new OS's since then. The latest one is the best yet and it has cleared up a lot of issues.

Also, when you do get this process finished and your wifi is working and accepting the user license agreement in the video chat, you will want to use the playbook, without charging it until the battery goes to 0%. The first time you take it to zero, you will notice that it doesn't shut off. Mine went for another hour and ten minutes while showing 0%.

After doing this it will power off automatically and then plug it into your micro usb charger and leave it until it charges to 100%. Your battery will be reading correct after that and to be sure you can run it down to 0% again and it will shut down this time right at 0%. This will get you back in great shape and you can start enjoying the full features of the playbook.

[jvictor77]

Could the battery drain be caused by the fact that it's constantly (unsuccessfully) searching for wifi?

[basitj]

Ok guys, the PB is literally screwed and has turned into a paper weight now.

I did clean OS update and it went through successfully. Now the Wifi as usual is not working and i cant even set it up. It's stuck on the second screen on the initial wizard.

Any help will be highly appreciated

[SmakBerry]

They do funky things all of a sudden... I should know... mines currently in with RIM repair.
Since you got it just over a month ago, I suggest calling RIM as you are still within your 90 days. They will go through all the steps required and may just do an RMA and get it repaired if they deem it necessary.

[basitj]

Well, there's a catch. I am in a country where RIM may not be in a position to help.

Can anyone tell me how to initialize this thing without wifi? I literally was using it as a digital video player and now its a stone.

[pbfan]

What do you mean "It's stuck on the second screen on the initial wizard."?

Ok guys, the PB is literally screwed and has turned into a paper weight now.

I did clean OS update and it went through successfully. Now the Wifi as usual is not working and i cant even set it up. It's stuck on the second screen on the initial wizard.

Any help will be highly appreciated

[basitj]

When I boot it shows a wizard, i select the country and then i have to select a wifi network. Now this wifi does'nt work on this playbook. Damn, i'm stuck.

Even if i skip wifi setup, i go a few steps further where i have to accept the agreement. Agreement never loads, and i have no way to go.

Any idea?

[sportline]

if no wifi then you should be able to force an update thru bb manager in your computer. isn't it true?

[basitj]

It was true till i had the playbook running. The mistake i did was to update it and clean install. Now most probably i have the latest OS but im not set up. so its .... of no use

[sportline]

you can repeat the process, maybe revert to previous os release will make it run.
but you definitely can work something out if pb is recognised by bb desktop manager.

[Schlymer]

Call the US number and they will help you. It doesn't matter what country you are in. I am sorry that the clean install didn't take care of the problem, but you got that out of the way, which is the first step that blackberry support would have got you to do. The best thing is to call. Here is the number. 1 877 644 8410 once again I am sorry that you are having such a hard time with your playbook. The help center will work with you until the whole problem is resolved. One way or another you will be back in business. Who knows, you may even get a new tablet if it is really biatched.

[Schlymer]

They do funky things all of a sudden... I should know... mines currently in with RIM repair.
Since you got it just over a month ago, I suggest calling RIM as you are still within your 90 days. They will go through all the steps required and may just do an RMA and get it repaired if they deem it necessary.

The 90 days is for free customer support. The playbook itself has a year warrentee on hardware.

[SmakBerry]

The 90 days is for free customer support. The playbook itself has a year warrentee on hardware.

Yes, I realize that. But if it's after the 90 days and he calls and it's fixed over the phone, they will want to charge.

[basitj]

Thanks @Schlymer, I'll call them anyways to see what they say on Monday. But I have a few updates from my side to share with you guys.

Initially I thought the update did get downloaded and installed, but I was wrong I think. The file is large, a few hundred megabytes and I cant sit watching the download happen, so i plugged it in and went off my seat. Whenever I come back, the Plabook is booted up on initial wizard and now I saw the error that I missed last few times i tried the download.

It says it lost connection with Playbook? I don't know what that means.

See the error for yourself:



There might be a few problems:

* The download failed?
* Desktop manager messes up, lets the playbook start before it installs the new update


No matter what, i believe it did wipe my play book, resets to factory default but failed to install the new os.

Is there a way to side load the OS or something? I'm sure that could at least bring my play book back to working even if the wifi doesnt work.

[basitj]

Okay, here is the update. Thanks for the number @Schlymer, that really gives me a ray of hope here.

I called them and they took a whole hour to sign me up with the 90 days support trial. I believe it was necessary operationally, but the problem was it took a whole hour on phone to register and my country wasn't there on the list. I protest!!! Why the heck my country is not on the list???

Then she made case and forward me to level 1 support and the lady on the phone was actually good. She was quick and she quickly understood what i said and well, she actually has suggested a solution.

What she diagnosed was a power management issue on my laptop that was shutting down the usb after an hour or so. While the OS download takes longer than the USB sleep time, USB disconnects, tablet boots, desktop manager gives an error and the whole process fails.

She suggested me to disable the USB power management that i did and now the OS is downloading again.

I wonder why don't they let the OS reside on the hard disk once downloaded? It downloads the whole thing all over again, no resume at all

I hope this process works for me this time. I'll let you guys know if it works.

Thanks for all of you for your help so far.

[hemertwv]

Mine is going back this week, both my WIFI and Bluetooth just died, I put it on its cradle at night and in the morning Bluetooth and WIFI no longer work. They are sending out the return FEDEX box monday morning, lets hope it is covered under warranty, and not a billable thing.

[basitj]

Bad and Good at the same time.

Bad , because u lost your wireless chip on playbook, good, that you may end up getting a new one or this one fixed.

I think I had the bluetooth working , just wifi was busted.

[basitj]

Ohkay, I have further updates here.

After talking to the helpline, I disabled power management on the USB on my laptop and started the update again. This time I sat there watching every bit of the progress bar going further. This resulted in a few hours of staring at the screen.

Finally the download completed, and installation started. The installation went all the way to , well, almost end. See below:



As soon as the progress bar hit it's 100%, I got the good old error, "The USB connection to the tablet lost, try again later".

Now this is not very encouraging

I've emailed back to support, let's see what they say.

[garyallan]

Mine is going back this week, both my WIFI and Bluetooth just died, I put it on its cradle at night and in the morning Bluetooth and WIFI no longer work. They are sending out the return FEDEX box monday morning, lets hope it is covered under warranty, and not a billable thing.

This is exactly what happened with me both WiFi and Bluetooth are not working. I did a fresh install and now I'm stuck on the second screen in setup. I get a new one in 3 days (or refurbished one i have no idea) via FEDEX. I hope this isn't going to be a recurring problem.

[bAAx]

Call the US number and they will help you. It doesn't matter what country you are in. I am sorry that the clean install didn't take care of the problem, but you got that out of the way, which is the first step that blackberry support would have got you to do. The best thing is to call. Here is the number. 1 877 644 8410 once again I am sorry that you are having such a hard time with your playbook. The help center will work with you until the whole problem is resolved. One way or another you will be back in business. Who knows, you may even get a new tablet if it is really biatched.

i had the combined wifi/bridge malfunction, combined with an inability to connect to/communicate with the desktop software. everything worked fine before, went out of the door (took the PB, naturally), when i came back the PB simply wouldnt connect my home wifi, the network was no longer under saved networks, not even manually adding it worked and bridge wouldnt open.
called the number above, (from a mobile, in belgium.. great) they took their sweet time but after an hour we got to updating the os from errormessage my desktop software gave me that there was no communication w the PB (there is the option to retry the connection or update the os), and this fixed it...
ergo, it was a software issue (at least in my case).
beware: you need to backup your data on the PB, as it will get lost in the os update (not available in my case..)
the hotline woman told me that a wireless os update (which i did, to the 1.0.7xx) may give small corruptions, hence the reinstall through desktop..
hth

[garyallan]

whoa playbook came today...one day later!