wifi refuses to turn on please help!

By treky fan, 11 December, 2013

Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Last night, I turned my phone off and back on in order to get my bluetooth earpeace to connect. Some time after this, I noticed that my i-phone 4s, running the latest ios, was on 3g instead of my wifi network. I went in to settings, wifi, and found no networks. Restarting the phone seemed to fix the problem for a while. I got up this morning, noticing that my phone is once again on 3g. I reset network settings, no wifi, reset all settings, still no wifi, restarted the phone, still nothing. Under the wifi settings, voiceover says wifie off dimmed and i can't turn it on. Any help to fix this problem is welcome!

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By Isaac Hebert (not verified) on Monday, December 23, 2013 - 20:18

Did you try doing a hard reset of the phone or resetting the router.

By treky fan on Monday, December 23, 2013 - 20:18

Is the hard reset the one where you press the lock button six times? If so, I have already done this, with the same results. My internet is working, i was able to get online using a friend's laptop.

Hi! Hard reset is done by holding down the home key and the sleep key on the top of the phone at the same time, for approximately 10 seconds, or maybe up to 15, but not much longer than that, cause that will put the phone in recovery mode. The clue is to hold both buttons down until the phone turns off, and turns back on again. So release the buttons as soon as the Apple logo appears on the screen again. That's one reason that you might wanna get sighted assistance while doing this. Another reason is the bug that sometimes jumps up to bite you when doing this, that causes all VoiceOver settings to be reset. So if that happens, and you're not on iOS 7, where you can just use Siri to get VO back up and running, you might want to get sighted assistance to get things working again. Not sure if this bug has been fixed in iOS 7, cause I haven't updated from iOS 6 yet for several reasons. If this doesn't work, I think your best bet is to plug the phone in to a computer with iTunes, do a backup of the entire phone, then hit restore. This will delete everything on your phone and reset it to factory settings, but hopefully, since you was so smart to do a backup first, you can restore everything as it was from your backup afterwards. If this doesn't work either, then my gut-feeling tells me that this is a hardware issue and you'll have to go down to where you bought the phone and make your angry face, and get them to replace it with a new one. :) Hope this helps Take care! :)

By steven carey on Monday, December 23, 2013 - 20:18

Hi Treky Fan, Sorry to say this but I had exactly the same problem with my iPhone 4s about two weeks after the upgrade to IOS 7. I too found that I only had 3G and that there were no Wi Fi connections available. Also, the Wi Fi switch was greyed out and would not switch at all. It turned out that the phone had a fault and was not repairable. I was lucky because I had ought the phone directly from Apple rather than through a phone company in the UK and due to UK law they were obliged to replace it (the phone was 19 months old). If your iPhone 4s is like mine you might get a replacement but you might also like to talk to the supplier if it came from a phone company? Steve.

By treky fan on Monday, December 23, 2013 - 20:18

As a last rezort, I restored the phone, hoping that it would fix my wifi problem. After the restore, I still have the same problem.

By Piotr Machacz on Monday, December 23, 2013 - 20:18

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news... or maybe not, who knows. there is a bug in iOS 7 which causes the wifi chip in the 4S, and only the 4S, to overheat and take a dump. Some people were able to fix it by resetting network settings, as well as putting it in the freezer for a couple of hours. No, seriously. If it's still broken after that, then you need to take it to an apple store as your chip's now defective and you'll need your phone replaced.

By treky fan on Monday, December 23, 2013 - 20:18

After leaving my phone in the freezer for an hour and a half, my wifi still will not turn on.