• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Verizon S5 won't let me enable wifi

RA_BH

RA_BH

Well-Known Member
Version: 4.4.2, Baseband: NE9, 16Gb, rooted but otherwise stock

no clue as to what happened; it was fine this morning before work. at work, wifi was off and I used my data connection. got home, tried to turn wifi on, and it won't take my tap to turn on wifi, either from the notification bar, or from the Settings/wifi panel.

I've tried a power off/ power on cycle; I've done a battery pull; I've wiped both the Dalvik cache and Cache, using Safestrap.

I'm wide open for suggestions, folks. I certainly didn't add any new software between this morning and tonight.

I'll do a backup in anticipation of <shudders> a factory reset, but would really like to avoid that if possible.
 
if anyone is interested, here is a rundown of what I've done since first posting:
  • checked that airplane mode was off (it was)
  • checked that there were no power saving options enabled
  • GPS shut off, BT shut off
  • hotspot was not enabled
  • took the cover back off and carefully but firmly pinched the phone all over the back as if I was putting the cover back on
  • tried booting up in safe mode
still no joy, still hoping for a fix....
 
On wild guess, maybe something happened to your 'wpa_supplicant.conf' file (a text file that stores the info for whatever wireless networks you've set your phone to connect with). Maybe some entry somehow got corrupted and that's why you can't enable WiFi anymore.

1) Since you rooted your phone you can use a file manager to go to:

/data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf

2) Copy that 'wpa_supplicant.conf' file to a safe place.

3) Check that the 'wpa_supplicant.conf' back up is actually where you copied it to.

4) Delete that original ' wpa_supplicant.conf' file.

5) See if you can start WiFi again -- it should make a new, mostly blank 'wpa_supplicant.conf' file (as in you will have to re-enter all WiFi network logins you used to have)

--- If this doesn't work and you still can't start up WiFi, copy your backed up 'wpa_supplicant.conf' file back into the /data/misc/wifi directory. At least all your previous WiFi connections info will be restored. And hopefully someone else will have solution for you.
 
Good to hear that worked. Save that backed up wpa_supplicant.conf file. If you view it with a text editor it holds the SSID and passphrase info for whatever WiFi networks you had previously saved. Might save time digging out old post-it notes with for forgotten passwords.
 
svim said:
Good to hear that worked. Save that backed up wpa_supplicant.conf file. If you view it with a text editor it holds the SSID and passphrase info for whatever WiFi networks you had previously saved. Might save time digging out old post-it notes with for forgotten passwords.
Click to expand...
that's a good idea, but it wasn't holding wifi passwords before, so with luck, creating the new file will solve that, too ;)
 
Actually, it's worse than it was -- before the incident yesterday, as long as the phone didn't go thru a power off / power on cycle, it retained my password for my home AP, even if wifi was turned off. It doesn't even do that now -- if I turn off wifi, the password is forgotten.
 
stock Samsung ROM.
what I'll probably do tonight is look at that file on my S3‚ and see if something jumps out.
 
Just want to add that any time you're doing anything with that ' wpa_supplicant.conf' file be sure WiFi is disabled. I didn't list it before because at that point it you said it couldn't even start it.
 
thanks for the heads-up, svim

the 2 files are quite different, so I'm still stuck with the S5 not remembering connections' passwords. I'll wait until the weekend to do a factory reset.
 
I did the factory reset, and there is no difference in the remembering of wifi passwords -- it doesn't, if wifi is turned off.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm supposing my next step would be to use Odin to re-flash (correct terminology?) one of the KitKat versions that doesn't have a locked bootloader, either NE9 or its predecessor.
 
Hi, I think that it isn't possible to go back on a Verizon phone, a quick search should help find the article on it. Phil
 
philayl said:
Hi, I think that it isn't possible to go back on a Verizon phone, a quick search should help find the article on it. Phil
Click to expand...
Thnx for your reply; I've been on the version in the first post intentionally, so as to avoid forced upgrades. I wound up using ODIN to re-flash to NE9 (no change to version), correcting whatever it was that had gotten borked. wifi is good again!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom