I know this has been covered a lot (too much I think, most are unresolved), but I've tired my search skills out, so I'd like to ask for much-needed help. Got an iPhone 3G that used to run on 3.1.3, baseband 5.11. After a few years of no hiccups, this one day my WiFi just decides to give up on me. Turned WiFi off and on again and again but no networks were being detected, not even manually inputted. Rebooted, nothing. Reset network settings, nothing. Reset all, nothing. Restore then jailbreak/unlock (redsnow, offline ultrasnow), still nothing. Did some research. Did the freezer thing, no dice. Found a site that said maybe wifi chip is busted/got fried, but I have a MAC address being shown, and bluetooth works OK. So it can't be a hardware problem, right? Maybe the baseband got corrupted? So I decided to go to 6.15 BB on 4.2.1, never mind I can never go back to lower BBs, and boom! Still no WiFi. Everything works, but not WiFi. Was even trying WiFiFoFum but it still could not detect any when my other wifi phones can! So what could be my issue? Hardware or software? Replace wifi chip? Or something else.

I'd have already pasted/posted my syslog, but man, there's a ton of private data in there. Do we have any rules on proper formatting of syslog posts, removing which lines and showing only which important parts, etc.? Would've searched the forums (wasn't there a sticky bout the syslogs???) if I was thinking straight right now.

3G/EDGE works fine, bluetooth is still fine, GPS is fine, even today on 4.2.

TIA

UPDATE: So I cleared my syslog first and turned wifi off and on, ran wififofum, and after letting it run a few cycles, wifi off and on again, then got logs. See http://pastebin.com/7JZpgGcB

Can you post a syslog of the iPhone starting up?

Here it is...
Feb 2 18:47:03 ALICE kernel[0]: IOReturn IOMobile - Syslog

Will it matter if I booted with the wifi off, or should i repost with wifi turned on?

You really should repost with wifi turned on.

I saw nothing that pointed to a wifi problem in that syslog.

What private data are you worried about revealing in the syslog? If you are worried about this, you can email the syslog privately to me.

The private stuff I was thinking of was like the phone number and such, but a simple removal of the sim was enough.

here's the logs with wifi turned on...didn't notice that much of a difference, but that's just me.
Feb 2 19:46:09 ALICE profiled[49]: profiled|Idled - Syslog

I don't see anything wrong in that syslog either.

I notice you have SBSettings installed (plus quite a few other mobile substrate addons)
Do you also have OpenSSH installed?

There have been examples of problems connecting to some wifi networks (unprotected wifi networks) with these two packages installed (often simply removing them and reinstalling the packages fixes this)

There is no sign that you have the blacksn0w related wifi problem. Also no sign you have the potentially thermal related hardware issue.
Other hardware issues (wifi antenna not connected properly for example) may not show up in syslog. Have you had this phone repaired at all?

No I haven't had it repaired, and checked in Cydia, no OpenSSH package installed either. And the wifi antenna is what I'm kinda afraid of. THis phone's gone through a lot of abuse (mostly waist high drops, but it was on its leather case). I just needed to confirm if it was indeed hardware, 'cause I saw this site about a guy who repaired his wifi by heating up the chip with a 40W soldering iron...something I'm not inclined to do if I wasn't sure it's hardware.

How do you "determine[d] it is not a SW problem by using iRecovery or another tool to a "radio readnvram" test."?

As far as I know, the readnvram references are not really applicable any more, this is because from at least iOS 3.1 you can't change the mac address from iRecovery.
This diagnostic technique was more applicable to 2G phones which had a clear software related wifi problem.

I see. But, if it really was a hardware problem, would those wifi chip reflow solutions really work?

If it was wifi chip related, I would expect you would see specific failure messages trying to enable wifi in the syslog.

My guess is that you have a broken connection to the wifi antenna.