Is WiFi of my Pi Zero W damaged?

[vaibhavm]

I bought a raspberry pi zero w from a local retailer. I burned a raspbian "buster" image (dated 2019-09-26) into a 16GB SanDisk Class 10 SDHC memory card and booted the pi. Everything was working seamlessly. I updated the pi via terminal using

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sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

(commands were similar to this as I upgraded 20 days ago). When upgrading I interrupted the upgrade 2-3 times but the upgrade was installed successfully. Later on, I kept the pi as it is for some days and again booted it after a few days.

Then I noticed that my pi is unable to connect to my WiFi network. It was showing

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 No wireless interfaces found 

.

The ifconfig wlan0 gives:

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wlan0: flag=4098<BRADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ether b8:27:eb:db:be:ea txqueue len 1000 (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
        TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up gives

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SIOCSIFFLAGS: Input/Output error

. There is a neither hard nor soft block on WiFi and Bluetooth. I've tried changing the contents of

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wpa_supplicant.conf

by entering network config, changing wifi country etc.

Furthermore, I've tried and successfully failed:

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iwlist wlan0 scan
sudo rfkill unblock all
sudo killall wpa_supplicant
sudo wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0
sudo wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0 -d

Changing contents of /etc/network/interfaces to:

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auto lo

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "network-name"
wpa-psk "network-password"

Tried installing plain raspbian dated 2020-02-13 (latest version of raspbian).

Neither WiFi nor Bluetooth is working on my Pi. What should I do now? I'm trying for 1 week.

I bought a Wifi dongle, also that is not working.
Please help me, guys.
Thanks.

[k1aas]

I have exactly the same problem with my pi zero w.

- happens with all three of the raspbian images (lite, full and desktop, loaded via imager c1.2 on Unbuntu)
- ssid and psk are correctly defined in wpa_supplicant.conf
- wpa_supplicant.conf edited with vim
- ssh and wpa_supplicant.conf get removed from the root directory at startup
- also happens at a very short distance to the wifi-router
- PuTTY SSH Client displays a fatal error: unable to open connection to raspberrypi
- list of wifi users does not show the pi

I don't have a display or a keyboard.

Could it be that the board itself is defective?

[wildfire]

@ both, Are you sure it's a zero w you received?

[davidcoton]

What does this command report?

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cat /proc/cpuinfo

[wildfire]

What does this command report?

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cat /proc/cpuinfo

Yeah, should've mentioned that

On a slightly related note I'm working on a small project (currently very alpha) that could give users all the information required easily (think system information on windows) and will be looking for beta testers in a week or so. RL kicks in sometimes.

[k1aas]

@ both, Are you sure it's a zero w you received?

Printing on back side states Raspberry Pi Zero W V1.1, and the wireless/bluetooth chip is visible on the front.

[k1aas]

What does this command report?

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cat /proc/cpuinfo

I might have to buy a display and keyboard to do that ..

[davidcoton]

What does this command report?

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cat /proc/cpuinfo

I might have to buy a display and keyboard to do that ..

Borrow them from your PC?

[k1aas]

I might have to buy a display and keyboard to do that ..
[/quote]

Borrow them from your PC?
[/quote]

Sigh. This situation does show the limitations of a laptop/tablet/headless only life ..
Waiting for vaibhavm's response.

[epoch1970]

The OP said he interrupted install a few times. Perhaps a file was damaged in the process.
Then he modified his network config in a way that basically makes Raspbian networking fail. (using /etc/network/interfaces without blocking dhcpcd)

You're not trying to connect to a wifi network "protected" with WEP, are you?
Open or WPA/WPA2 are fine. WEP is no longer accepted, at least by default.

Also, 0w only supports Wifi 2.4GHz, not 5GHz.

[vaibhavm]

@ both, Are you sure it's a zero w you received?

Yes, I'm sure it's a zero w. When I bought it, WiFi was working but suddenly it stopped working.

[vaibhavm]

What does this command report?

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cat /proc/cpuinfo

It give:

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processor       : 0
model name      : ARMv6-compatible processor rev 7 (v6l)
BogoMIPS        : 697.95
Features        : half thumb fastmult vfp edsp java tls
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x0
CPU part        : 0xb76
CPU revision    : 7

Hardware        : BCM2835
Revision        : 9000c1
Serial          : 00000000a289ebbf
Model           : Raspberry Pi Zero W Rev 1.1

[vaibhavm]

The OP said he interrupted install a few times. Perhaps a file was damaged in the process.
Then he modified his network config in a way that basically makes Raspbian networking fail. (using /etc/network/interfaces without blocking dhcpcd)

You're not trying to connect to a wifi network "protected" with WEP, are you?
Open or WPA/WPA2 are fine. WEP is no longer accepted, at least by default.

Also, 0w only supports Wifi 2.4GHz, not 5GHz.

Yes, I interrupted the install but after that installation was successful and I was able to use the WiFi. If I edit the /etc/network/interfaces file and hovering pointer on the wifi icon on the top left corner shows connection to DHCP lost. Because of that, I removed the changes that I made in the interfaces file but still, nothing happened.

No, I'm not trying to connect to a wifi network with WEP protection. It's a WPA/WPA2 connection because it's a mobile hotspot to which I regularly connect my pi's wifi.