Wifes HP laptop. About 4 years old.  Been running fine apart from a new battery several months ago.

Switched on several days ago and wifi light on keyboard was orange. No connection. Dug around settings and airplane mode was active. Couldn't disable it as it said " Windows could not find Wireless Devices on this PC ".

Rebooted and it resolved - wifi light on keyboard went white and all appeared well until I realised it was running slow and after more digging HDD utilisation was 100%

Played around with it, tried some things and killed off superfetch using the cmd line and all good.  Put it aside for a weekend review.

She's been using it fine (wirelessly) and again this morning, turned it on..Same issues. Airplane mode active. No wireless devices found on laptop.  Rebooted and it works fine again.

I've also ran System File Scan and that returns all good.

So, does this sound like a failing wireless device in the laptop which gives me an excuse to buy a new one :)  or software related.  The HDD was also backup at 100% after reboot again, which fixed the wireless but seemed to create the HDD issue again.

Thanks for any advice as to what to try next. 

Ged