3 replies to this topic

[zigwm]

This is an extremely weird and frustrating problem.

On a Motorola Droid 1 ("sholes") model A855, I had been running CM 7.0.3 since shortly after its release. WiFi, both as a client and in tethering mode, worked fine. Partly due to laziness I never got around to upgrading to CM 7.1.0, but my thought process was not to risk breaking something that was working well enough.

About two weeks ago, WiFi simply stopped working in client mode. It behaves normally as far as the user interface: one can toggle it on and off, going into an out of airplane mode produces the correct displays for WiFi and Bluetooth, and so on. The only problem was that there were no longer any networks seen, and even test apps such as GMon saw nothing coming in.

I decided that the most likely explanation was a hardware failure such as a dead receiver, so I switched over to an entirely different handset, an identical model Motorola Droid 1. From ClockworkMod recovery, I made a complete Nandroid backup of the old handset, moved the MicroSD card into the new handset, and did a complete Nandroid restore to replicate the image. Much to my surprise, the WiFi failure moved from the old to the new handset!

Now thinking that the problem might have been some kind of system corruption (and in possession of a complete Nandroid backup image), I decided to update to CM 7.2.0-RC2 using ROM Manager/ ClockworkMod, figuring that this would cleanly refresh all of the system files. Although the updated firmware seems to be working at least as well as the older version, the behavior of the WiFi client remained unfixed.

But there's more! In the strangest twist yet, I discovered that WiFi tethering using the standard app for that still works perfectly. So obviously this cannot be a hardware problem, because the WiFi client failure has moved across two different handsets and WiFi tethering validates the hardware.

I tried "fix permissions" from ROM Manager, but that seemed to have no substantial effect.

I'm desperate enough that I can't think of anything to do other than to wipe the entire device and start from a clean install, but even if that works it would leave open the question of what went wrong and what might cause it to happen again, and it's not really acceptable for me to have to worry about waitng for the next time it does.

Suggestions?

[bassmadrigal]

Try formatting the /system partition in recovery and reinstalling CM and gapps. Sometimes upgrading the system files can carry over problems. Otherwise, you may want to use a program like Titanium Backup to back up all your apps and app data and then format the /system partition and perform a Factory Reset/Data Wipe. Then reinstall CM and gapps. Boot back up and see if your problem is resolved. If so, you should be able to safely restore all your apps and app data back (be careful not to restore any system-related settings as restoring these could bring your problem right back.

[zigwm]

What I ended up doing was using "FXR WiFi Fix and Rescue" from the Market:

https://play.google....morefixer&hl=en

I tested it first on the old device with CM 7.0.3 and it worked there, so I ran it on the new device with CM 7.2.0-RC2 and it worked there as well. This app does erase all of the stored WiFi network profiles, but it clearly warns about that and it was a small price to pay. I used "WiFi Key Recovery" to save all passwords:

https://play.google....yRecovery&hl=en

This seemed by far the least invasive solution, although I appreciate the advice about more drastic approaches and would have taken that advice if this had not worked.

[samcan]

It's also happened on my Droid with 7.1; it stopped working for a few days, and then mysteriously started working again; later stopped, and then started again, etc. It's really annoying because I don't have cellular service with my device, so when the wifi stops, I'm kind of dead in the water as it comes to syncing my Astrid tasks and everything.

samcan