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Is there a way to get the wireless LED of a laptop to indicate wireless activity the way that the hard-drive LED does?
It seems to have been implemented in Ubuntu, so fortunately it can be done with software. Does anyone know of a way to get it to work in Windows?
Synetech
Posted 2012-08-01T17:05:18.130
Reputation: 63 242
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There is a how to for "influence the flashing of your laptops WiFi led" for windows found here at Boris Wach. with all do credit to Boris.
It explains and shows process in a pretty straight forward manner with screen shots.
Carl B
Posted 2012-08-01T17:05:18.130
Reputation: 6 430
1That looks perfect! In fact, there are several other entries already in there that begin with led…, so this may in fact work. I’ve added the entry and will check if it works tomorrow after rebooting. – Synetech – 2012-08-14T04:45:40.530
Hmm, it’s not working. I thought maybe it depends on the wireless adapter/driver, but Googling it seems to indicate it applies to at least two or three different kinds of wireless adapters, so presumably it would be at least a semi-universal setting. This post implies that some of the other pre-existing entries may be needed if LedMode doesn’t work, so I’ll search and experiment with those. Either way, this got me on the right track.
2I would definitely prefer to be surrounded by less blinking devices. – Marco – 2012-08-01T17:11:20.277
@Marco, maybe, but it provides no useful information as it is; you may as well just disable the LED altogether. – Synetech – 2012-08-01T17:23:06.937
Wow, I don't remember the last laptop I saw that still had a physical light for this (but then I deal almost exclusively with Thinkpads at the office). – Shinrai – 2012-08-01T17:23:26.830
2@Synetech - And I wouldn't agree that it's no useful information - it lets you know the wireless radio is turned on (and draining your battery). It's only useless if the system doesn't provide a way to turn the wireless off. – Shinrai – 2012-08-01T17:24:15.067
I don't see much use for this information. A simple on/off is enough. When it's blinking, that just tells you that something's happening. That's not really useful unless you can tell exactly what's happening. – Iszi – 2012-08-01T17:30:59.837
@Shinrai, that’s not useful information because it is static and there is already an easy way to get that. I always drag a shortcut to NIC to the Start Menu to give me instant access to my current network statistics.
– Synetech – 2012-08-01T17:31:01.310@Iszi, how is that any different from the HD LED, DVD LED, NIC LED, battery/charge LEDs, or even power LED? Those are exactly same and yet they are still included. It is very useful because it lets you see that something is happening and provides dynamic information; certainly much more useful than it is now, showing a static piece of information. – Synetech – 2012-08-01T17:34:19.653
@Synetech - Not all users are that savvy, mind you. :) – Shinrai – 2012-08-01T17:37:54.117
@Shinrai, I don’t know what that means, but if you are saying that it would be confusing, I would again direct you to the HD LED right beside it. (Years ago, when I had three or four 512MB drives in my system, I attached a separate LED to each one so that I could have per-drive activity indicators. Unfortunately, I only had some red, amber, and green LEDs from the cases of old computers at the time. It would have been really sweet if I had the multi-color LEDs I do now.) – Synetech – 2012-08-01T18:02:09.727
@Synetech - I meant it at face value, and I meant it on your earlier comment. "I always drag a shortcut to NIC to the Start Menu to give me instant access to my current network statistics." A lot of people don't know how to do that or that it's even possible - hence the use of the light. – Shinrai – 2012-08-01T18:19:34.837
I personally feel NIC LEDs fall under the same category as Wi-Fi LEDs in this regard. HDD LEDs, DVD LEDs, and Battery LEDs may still serve useful purposes in their blinking. The difference here being that there is a lot of noise in network activity. Just because a NIC or Wi-Fi LED would blink, doesn't mean it's doing anything you would have requested, expected, or even understood. HDD activity on the other hand, is mostly something even a mildly savvy end-user can anticipate and correlate to its source. – Iszi – 2012-08-01T18:35:00.963
@Shinrai, those people have no use for any LEDs then. They are better served with some tray icons or something they can click.
;-)– Synetech – 2012-08-01T19:14:59.823@Iszi, not really. When was the last time you managed to get the hard-drive LED to stop blinking for more than about 1-2 seconds? Even if you stop every service and kill every process and strip Windows down to the bare minimum (even killing Explorer), there is still activity.
:-|Network activity on the other hand can be made to stop altogether (at least for a while; Windows itself likes to ping Microsoft’s servers now and then). – Synetech – 2012-08-01T19:17:41.163@everyone.. If he wants the answer, look for it. If not, don't worry about the question and move on. Synetech, can you provide your OS and laptop model? – cutrightjm – 2012-08-01T19:48:23.973
@ekaj, > If he wants the answer, look for it. If not, don't worry about the question and move on. I was thinking the same thing. I don’t know why people here put up so much resistance to questions they are not interested in. > can you provide your OS and laptop model? I’m wondering in general, but at least for a
Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter. – Synetech – 2012-08-01T20:18:28.227I've been looking - but so far the closest thing I've found is Network Lights.. but that uses the ScrollLock and NumLock keys. – cutrightjm – 2012-08-01T20:28:44.750