Accidentally dropped my phone on my laptop and froze it; restarted and now wifi won't work.

Steelfeathr

Estimable
Jan 28, 2016
3
0
4,520
I'm typing this from my phone right now. Laptop is an ASUS N550JK, running Windows 10.

Just a while ago, I accidentally dropped my phone, which fell on the keyboard of my laptop and caused it to freeze. The screen froze as a flattened checkerboard pattern. For some reason, I thought to pull the power cable (I was charging at the time), and the laptop rebooted itself. When I loaded in, everything seemed fine, but my wifi wouldn't work.

I've tried: 1) using Ethernet and connecting to different wifi networks; 2) using Windows' troubleshooter and resetting the wifi adapter; 3) rebooting; 4) ipconfig /flushdns; 5) checking to see if my wifi setting were set to manual ip -- all to no avail. I've not been able to access the internet at all.

I've noticed a couple things: A) when switching wifi networks, it connects almost instantly. The wifi icon shows as 'connected'. However, nothing loads in both Edge and Firefox, and when I mouse over the icon it says 'Unidentified network/No access'. B) When I tried using my phone's hotspot, the laptop said it was 'Connected', but could not access the internet. On my phone, it sensed no computer connecting to the hotspot. C) Device manager seems normal: there's no warning icon/flags next to both of my network adapters. D) When doing ipconfig, if connecting to wifi, it says 'media disconnected' even when the wifi icon is connected. When using Ethernet, it says media connected, but the 'Default gateway' is blank. Lastly, this may seem irrelevant, but E) Windows search does not load any results, both local and online.

I'm currently typing this on the same wifi network I'm attempting to use on my laptop, i.e. it's not the network's problem but my laptop.

Any help as to how to resolve this would be greatly appreciated. I've been wading through pages of Google searches on my phone with no results. I'm afraid that some hardware may have been shaken up and damaged by me dropping the phone on the keyboard, but as I said device manager shows nothing. Thanks in advance!

TL;DR: Dropped phone on laptop; laptop froze; restarted and wifi won't work. When the icon says connected, it also says unidentified network/no internet access. Ipconfig says media disconnected for wifi when connected, and Default Gateway is blank when using Ethernet. Network still works on phone. Have restarted multiple times.
 
Solution
Update:

I tried to run the netsh winsock reset command again (didn't work the last 2 times I tried it). It still didn't work, but this time I checked the registry and found that my Winsock key was missing. I was able to grab a healthy copy of the Winsock and Winsock2 registry keys from my friend's laptop the next day. I imported it into my registry and ran the command again. It worked this time, and after rebooting, my wifi was restored. Guess it wasn't a hardware problem after all, which is a relief.

Steelfeathr

Estimable
Jan 28, 2016
3
0
4,520
Update:

I tried to run the netsh winsock reset command again (didn't work the last 2 times I tried it). It still didn't work, but this time I checked the registry and found that my Winsock key was missing. I was able to grab a healthy copy of the Winsock and Winsock2 registry keys from my friend's laptop the next day. I imported it into my registry and ran the command again. It worked this time, and after rebooting, my wifi was restored. Guess it wasn't a hardware problem after all, which is a relief.
 
Solution