A woman spent four days struggling to connect her laptop to the internet- only for a repair shop to point out that the ‘wifi button was turned off.’
Sally Newall-Sanderson, from Warrington, Cheshire, was left baffled when she opened up her laptop last week and was unable to connect to her wifi.
The 44-year-old tried resetting the device, deleting and adding programs, and had been ringing her broadband company but was left panicking when nothing worked.
As a recruitment company director, the self-proclaimed digital dinosaur relies on her laptop for her work and even almost splurged out for a new laptop, which could have cost her £600.
At her wits’ end, she marched the device into a repair shop and told them how ‘stressed’ she was with it – only to feel ‘ridiculous’ when they rang her just five minutes later to let her know her blunder.
Sally Newall-Sanderson, from Warrington, Cheshire, spent four days struggling to connect her laptop to the internet- only for a repair shop to point out that the ‘wifi button was turned off’
The mother-of-three, who claims she had no idea the ‘buttons even existed’, believes that her five-year-old daughter may have knocked the button, or that she did it herself without realising.
Sally posted online, asking others ‘I’m not the only person that didn’t know about this am I?’ and was glad to have her laptop back, hoping to encourage others to ‘not panic’ and check their devices first.
Sally said: ‘I didn’t know these buttons ever existed on the side of laptops. It was working fine and then suddenly it wasn’t. It was coming up saying I couldn’t get on the wifi.
‘I started to panic because I’m not very good with computers, I’m not tech savvy at all. I was thinking: ”This isn’t great”.
‘For about three or four days I was ringing the broadband company to see if there was something wrong with my broadband. How embarrassing.
‘It got to about day four and I thought: “Right I’m going to have to book it in somewhere”.
‘When I got there, I was like: ”Right this needs sorting, I’m really stressed, I’ve been trying to figure it out for four days”. I’d been downloading things and doing this and that.
‘As soon as I dropped it off and left there, they rang me and had to explain it was just the wifi button on the side.
Sally spent four days barely able to work before realising the culprit of her problems was the tiny switch on the side and claims she would have been stuck for weeks if she hadn’t taken it to be fixed
Many were also shocked by her discovery with some saying they also never heard of the wifi button
‘They called me up about five minutes after dropping it off and said: ”You’re not going to believe what it was”. I was like: ”You’re joking me”.’
Sally spent four days barely able to work before realising the cause of her problems was the tiny switch on the side and claims she would have been stuck for weeks if she hadn’t taken it to be fixed.
Now she’s warning others to not panic, check the manual and check for any hidden buttons before taking anything in for servicing.
Sally said: ‘I was just pulling my hair out. I thought ”Oh gosh it’s a big problem”. I do really need it for work so I was that close to buying a new laptop as well. It would have cost me about £600.
‘All my laptops I’ve had, I’ve never noticed that before. I felt ridiculous. I either caught it or maybe my little girl’s caught it messing around.
She admitted tht her son, 15, has branded her ‘so embarassing’.
‘But even they wouldn’t have known,’ she said. ‘We could have all been sat here for weeks trying to work the problem out.
The mother-of-three, who claims she had no idea the ‘buttons even existed’, speculates that her or her five-year-old daughter may have knocked the button unknowingly
Now she’s warning others to not panic, check the manual and check for any hidden buttons before taking anything in for servicing
At her wits’ end, she marched the device into a repair shop and told them how ‘stressed’ she was with it
The bizarre feature is found on Dell Latitude laptops and is used for when people want to turn off their wifi while on a flight
‘My advice to others would be don’t panic. Always check the manual. I mean I don’t keep the manual but if you can, check. And check around your laptop for any kind of buttons.’
The bizarre feature is found on Dell Latitude laptops and is used for when people want to turn off their wifi while on a flight.
Thankfully the repair shop did not charge her for their time and Sally posted about the ’embarrassing’ ordeal online.
She said: ‘Do you know what I’ve never been? Tech fr*ggin savvy! Who knew that there was a wifi switch on the side of some laptops? Not bloody me! This little button that I’ve circled has nearly been the death of me!
‘It’s taken me four days of scratching my head looking very puzzled, lots of swear words not to mention the endless hours I’ve spent resetting everything, deleting, adding programs* until I admitted defeat and booked it into a shop to be fixed.. You can imagine my face when they rang me two minutes after dropping it off to say that 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 that didn’t know about this, am I?’
Many were also shocked by her discovery with some saying they also never heard of the wifi button.
One person wrote: ‘I don’t think I knew that either!! You are not alone lovely.’ Another said: ‘Lord. I thought it was a power button.’
While someone else wrote: ‘HAHA OMG funny! I didn’t know some laptops had that switch, I’m lucky, my laptop doesn’t have that.’ A fourth said: ‘What an absurd feature.’