Last night, my wireless card on my Alienware Aurora R4 seemed to have failed without warning. Not sure exactly what happened but my system could not detect it. It freaked me out because I had done nothing and could not use any of the Windows diagnostic tools to recover it. Looking at the Device Manager, I could not see it neither.
What I found out is that the Alienware Aurora R4 has a rather common issue where you need to disconnect both the wireless and Bluetooth cables inside then re-connect them. It was a bit of a pain to do this since the cables are quite small and require tiny hands to perform the operation. However, after reconnecting both cables and powering back my Alienware Aurora R4, my wireless network came back.
This is a very strange error. I cannot think of anything that would cause this issue. The only thing that may have occurred is the fan since it’s the closest moving component. But even then that makes little to no sense as it’s far enough where it should not affect the wiring.