Disabling Airplane Mode / Wireless Switches

[DavR]

Hi all,

 

Just a trick to share re disabling the wireless / Airplane Mode switches on Dell Laptops, which is hopefully transferable to other makes. Having installed Windows 10 on a bunch of laptops, I was most annoyed to find that, despite having the wireless hardware switch disabled in BIOS, in Windows users could still use this to put the machine in Airplane Mode, thus knocking out the wireless connection.

 

I found my answer using the suggestions on this page, this turns out to be due to the switch installing as a separate device called "Airplane Mode Switch" under Human Interface Devices. Disabling this device as well as all BIOS options has now fully neutralised the switch. I used the Device Installation restrictions under group policy as described in the link to do this.

 

Tested and verified on Dell Latitude E5530 laptops, but the method should be transferable; disable radio switches in the BIOS, and then disable the Airplane Mode Switch (name may vary) hardware device under HID in Device Manager.

 

Farewell pesky wireless switches!