Troubleshooting • Pi Zero 2 W not connecting to WiFi

Hey team,

I know this has been asked and there are threads on this already. However, I have gone through all those steps and still am unable to get my zero to connect to my wifi, I have even tried my phone's hotspot to troubleshoot. So I wanted to post this topic to consolidate all the other issues in other posts into one.

I used Raspberry Pi Imager v1.9.6, the Device option was for the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. I have been unsuccessful connecting to my WiFi in the following OSs: Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64), Raspberry Pi OS 64 & 32.

Using the Imager I have tried both Edit the settings and Clearing the Settings. When Editing the settings I have correctly provided my SSID, the password and the correct Network Region.

When I had a GUI OS, the Wireless popup would display with my home network and the correct password, however it would never connect.

Now I am persisting using the Lite OS, and here is what I have tried:
- raspi-config going through this way to put in my SSID and key/password, also setting my region to GB. The error I get when connecting this way is There was an error running option S1 Wireless LAN
- enabling and disabling Network Inferface Names that is the predictable network i/f names
- Editing /etc/NetworkManager/Network/Manager.conf
- wpa_passphrase SSID PASSWORD I saw the PSK was different, so ensured this was copied over to the manager.conf
- iwconfig wlan0 essid SSID & iwconfig wlan0 key PASSWORD
- created a wpa_supplicant.conf file in the supplicant folder
- ifconfig wlan0 up

wlan0 returns iwlist wlan0 scan returns all the SSIDs that are in the area, and my WiFi is showing. HOWEVER, I worry I have a permissions issue as when I run that command without sudo I get I have saved the output of sudo journalctl -u wpa_supplicant to a file and saw a few bits that jumped out to me:
- I have ommited a few lines that repeat, and this block repeats a few times, other lines I see in this log are:Any help would be appreciated. None of my other Pi's (5 or 4) have had issues connecting to my wifi after being imaged. Also, for note, I have turned off a feature on my router to "select the most appropriate frequency" so that shouldn't be a problem that my Pi is trying to connect to 5Ghz.

Statistics: Posted by Dabuke — Fri Nov 21, 2025 4:52 pm — Replies 2 — Views 117

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