A woman spent four days struggling to connect her laptop to the internet, only to be pointed out by a repair shop that the “wifi button was off.”
Sally Newall-Sanderson, from Warrington, Cheshire, was left baffled when she opened her laptop last week and couldn’t connect to her wifi.
The 44-year-old tried resetting the device, deleting and adding programs, and had been calling her broadband company, but panicked when nothing worked.
As the director of a recruitment company, the self-proclaimed digital dinosaur relies on her laptop for her work and even almost splurged on a new laptop, which could have cost her £600.
At her wit’s end, she took the device to a repair shop and told them how “stressed” she was about it, only to feel “ridiculous” when they called her just five minutes later to inform her of her mistake.
Sally Newall-Sanderson, from Warrington, Cheshire, spent four days struggling to connect her laptop to the internet, only to be pointed out by a repair shop that the “Wi-Fi button was off”.
The mother of three, who claims she had no idea “buttons existed,” believes her five-year-old daughter may have touched the button, or that she did so herself without realizing it.
Sally posted online and asked others: ‘I’m not the only person who didn’t know about this, am I?’ and she was glad to get her laptop back, hoping to encourage others to “not panic” and check her devices first.
Sally said: ‘I didn’t know these buttons existed on the side of laptops. It was working fine and suddenly it wasn’t. It showed up saying I couldn’t connect to the Wi-Fi.
‘I started panicking because I’m not very good with computers, I’m not tech savvy at all. I was thinking, “This isn’t cool.”
‘For about three or four days I was calling the broadband company to see if there was any problem with my broadband. How embarrassing.
‘It came around day four and I thought, “Well, I’m going to have to book it somewhere.”
“When I got there, I thought, ‘Okay, this needs to be fixed, I’m really stressed, I’ve been trying to figure this out for four days.’ I had been downloading stuff and doing this and that.
‘As soon as I left it and left there, they called me and had to explain to me that it was just the wifi button on the side.
Sally spent four days barely able to work before realizing that the small side switch was to blame for her problems and claims she would have been stuck for weeks if she hadn’t taken it to get it fixed.
Many were also surprised by their discovery, with some saying they had never heard of the Wi-Fi button.
“They called me about five minutes after I dropped it off and said, ‘You’re not going to believe what it was.’ I was like, ‘You’re kidding.’
Sally spent four days barely able to work before realizing the cause of her problems was the small side switch and claims she would have been stuck for weeks if she hadn’t taken it to get it fixed.
Now he warns others not to panic, to check the manual and check for hidden buttons before taking anything in for repair.
Sally said: ‘He was pulling my hair out. I thought, “Oh my God, that’s a big deal.” I really need it for work, so I was also about to buy a new laptop. It would have cost me about €600.
‘In all my laptops I’ve had, I’ve never noticed that before. I felt ridiculous. Either I caught it or maybe my little girl caught it playing.
She admitted that her 15-year-old son has called her “very embarrassing.”
“But even they wouldn’t have known,” he said. ‘We could have sat here for weeks trying to solve the problem.
The mother of three, who claims she had no idea “buttons existed,” speculates that she or her five-year-old daughter may have unknowingly pressed the button.
Now he warns others not to panic, to check the manual and check for hidden buttons before taking anything in for repair.
At her wit’s end, she took the device to a repair shop and told them how “stressed” she was with it.
The strange feature is found on Dell Latitude laptops and is used when people want to turn off their Wi-Fi during a flight.
‘My advice to others would be not to panic. Always check the manual. I mean I don’t have the manual but if you can, check it out. And check your laptop for any kind of button.
This strange feature is found on Dell Latitude laptops and is used when people want to turn off their WiFi during a flight.
Fortunately, the repair shop did not charge her for her time and Sally posted online about the “embarrassing” experience.
She said, ‘Do you know what I’ve never been? A technology expert! Who knew there was a wifi switch on the side of some laptops? Damn, it’s not me! This little button I circled has almost been the death of me!
‘It took me four days of scratching my head with a puzzled face, a lot of swearing, not to mention the endless hours I spent restarting everything, deleting, adding programs* until I admitted defeat and booked it into a store to be fixed. You can imagine my face when they called me two minutes after leaving it to tell me it was fixed.
‘Please put me out of my misery and tell me! Did you know about this switch? I’m not the only person who didn’t know about this, right?
Many were also surprised by their discovery, with some saying they had never heard of the Wi-Fi button.
One person wrote: ‘I guess I didn’t know either!! You’re not alone, lovely.’ Another said: ‘Sir. I thought it was a power button.’
While someone else wrote: ‘HAHA OMG how funny! “I didn’t know some laptops had that switch, I’m lucky my laptop doesn’t have it.” A fourth said: “What an absurd feature.”