No wireless interfaces found Pi 3

Question

I have a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and was using the inbuilt Wifi interface with no problems. I was using it as a web server which I'd SSH into. However, after being unable to SSH into it, I've seen that it's now showing me the message "No wireless interfaces found" in the Raspbian UI taskbar.

What could cause this to stop working so suddenly without (to my knowledge) any messing around with config settings? How do I fix this? The Pi has just been sitting on my desk so I can't imagine it's physical damage.

The output of ifconfig:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr b8:27:eb:4e:f2:ad  
          inet6 addr: fe80::b93d:28fd:d73e:d13f/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr b8:27:eb:1b:a7:f8  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:60 (60.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

Although wlan0 is displayed in this output, the Raspbian UI is not reflecting this.

I should also note, because this is often an issue, that my power supply should be sufficient as I'm using the official 2.5A PSU.

Answer 1

Have you tried setting it up before you even boot it up? I was trying to set up a pi zero w but didn't have the right adapters. So I found a way to set it up in Windows. This is the easiest way I found to do it and have done several times now.

Instructions from the site.

Insert your SD card with Raspbian into it into your computer and open the SD card from your file explorer - the drive will be labelled boot.

Within the boot directory, Right-Click > New > Text Document and rename the document to wpa_supplicant.conf - Make sure that you change the file extention from .txt to .conf - You will be prompted to confirm the extension change.

With the empty file created, Right-Click on it an select open. You may be prompted to select a program you'd like to open the file with - just choose Notepad.

This is where we enter our WiFi details. Enter the following text into the file, replacing the placeholder text with your own details.

network={ ssid="SSID" psk="password" key_mgmt=WPA-PSK }

SSID is the name of your WiFi network, and psk is your WiFi password.

Enable SSH

By default, the current version of Raspbian has SSH disabled. We're going to enable it here.

Create an empty file in the boot directory called ssh

Make sure that the file has no file extension, i.e. remove the .txt if you created the file by selecting New > Text File.

Connect

Your Pi is now ready for startup. Eject the SD card from your computer and insert it into your Pi. Power up your Pi (we recommend an official power supply) and wait a few moments for the initial boot to complete. On your computer, open up PuTTY.

We know that the default host name (the name of the machine) for a fresh Raspbian install is raspberrypi, so in the Host Name (or IP address) field enter raspberrypi. This searches for machines on that name on the local network. Once a connection is established, you'll be prompted by PuTTY to accept the connection to the new machine. You should see a black terminal prompting for a login. Enter the default username: pi and the default password: raspberry

If you get an error saying the host does not exist, try the troubleshooting steps.

Answer 2

I was having the same issue and found out for me at least, it was a permissions issue. I logged in with an account I created with basic permissions but as soon as I logged in under my "pi" account, the wireless connections appeared.

Answer 3

This is a bug... I don't know how to solve this but if you cannot connect to a wifi network then try this from terminal:

sudo apt-get install wpa_supplicant
sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

now fill the file with credentials e.g.

network={
    ssid="TestAP"
    psk="password"
}

now run command(assuming wlan1 is your interface):

sudo wpa_supplicant -B -iwlan1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dwext
sudo dhclient wlan1

this will help to connect to a wifi network if you cannot mange yourself from network manager on taskbar.

cheers!