This issue cannot be caused by a hardware problem, but it is possible that the Network adapter stopped receiving power from the motherboard, preventing the internet from working, which results in a missing Wifi icon.
1. Power Flush Your System
When your system is working properly, but its components are behaving unexpectedly or doing unusual things, power flushing is the best way to troubleshoot these problems. If your Network adapter has stopped working suddenly, which results in a missing Wi-Fi icon, then you can try power-fishing your laptop or computer to see whether it helps or not. To power flush your device:
2. Enable Wi-Fi Network Adapter
It is possible that your Wi-Fi network adapter gets disabled automatically for no reason, resulting in a missing Wi-Fi icon. To ensure that, check if your Network Adapter is disabled or not. If it is, then enabling it will fix your issue. But if your network adapter is enabled and facing this issue, try disabling and enabling it, which will reload the network adapter from the RAM and can fix your issue. To enable the Network Adapter:
3. Run Internet Connection Troubleshooter
Since there are various built-in components in Windows, there are also troubleshooters for them that allow users to fix the problems automatically regarding the components. For instance, if you run the internet connection troubleshooter, it will first enable the disabled network adapters, and then it will install the necessary network drivers if they are missing. To run the internet connection troubleshooter:
4. Restart WLAN Autoconfig Service
WLAN Autoconfig is a service that contains logic that is used to configure, discover, connect, and disconnect from the wireless local area network (WLAN). It is an essential service required for Wi-Fi to run properly. If this service is disabled or set to manual, you cannot use Wifi or see Wifi icon on the bottom right menu. It is possible that some third-party optimization software disables that service, causing Wifi icon to disappear. Therefore, you need to make sure that this service is running properly and set to automatic.
5. Update or Reinstall the Wifi Network Driver
If the issue persists, then it is possible that your network adapter is corrupted, preventing the hardware from communicating with your system. Windows has drivers for commonly used devices such as network adapters, keyboards, mouse, and more. You can easily reinstall your driver without even connecting to the internet. To fix this issue, you can either reinstall or update your network adapter by following the steps:
6. Reset Network Settings
If you use any third-party application for optimization, then your network adapters can be disabled, resulting in missing a Wifi icon. Since all the methods have failed to fix your issue, the last step is to reset the network settings, which will reinstall all the network adapters and also reset the network configurations to their default, such as DNS and proxy settings. To reset the network settings:
