hp pavillion wireless has disappeared

[jeffmoss26]

A friend of mine has an HP Pavillion TX1000 notebook and the wireless adapter has vanished.
I tried a number of things-reinstalling drivers, flashing the bios, reseating the card-all to no avail. Of course, it is out of warranty and HP wants to charge an obscene amount of money just for phone support. I had this issue on another HP laptop, which was a known problem, and they replaced the motherboard for free.
About the only thing I have not tried is an external USB wireless card.
Any thoughts?

 

[engiNURD]

Is it listed in device manager? If not, it seems like the card is dead.

 

[jeffmoss26]

No, it does not show up in device manager. I guess I could try to find a new wireless card, doesn't have to be from HP directly..

 

[engiNURD]

nope... find someone with a laptop wifi card w/ the same interface... oh look, in your sig, I see a laptop...

 

[criccio]

If its a mini-PCIe card and you are willing to do a little surgery, I recommend the Intel WiFi Link 5300 a/b/g/n card. They can be had for $20-$30 on Ebay and are more or less the best wifi card you can get.

 

[jeffmoss26]

surgery??

 

[criccio]

As in opening the laptop and replacing the wifi card... Depending on where the card is and how easy HP makes opening the notebook it could be a very easy or very difficult job.