ive had this playbook for over a year and everything has worked well, its been able to connect to many different networks but a few days ago it disconnected at some point and now it wont show any available networks at all or connect manually!!!! i read a lot of forums and have tried resetting my router, restarting the tablet, taking it to other locations, and even completely restoring the playbook to factory settings but now i am stuck on the setup, it wont even let me get past the connecting to wifi point!!! any solutions???????????? (btw i have lots of other devices connected to my router and they all work fine)

Sorry to hear. It does sound like the wi-fi hardware is perhaps dead? You would think that after a complete wipe that it would boot cleanly and let you connect to wi-fi to setup.

Have you tried the reset where you hold both volume buttons until the PlayBook reboots?
Have you tried letting the battery completely drain over a couple of days and then charging it back up? With the stack method, if necessary?

Both of these resets don't directly relate to wi-fi, but perhaps will reset something if it's just a software issue, instead of a hardware one.

The "good" news is that the PlayBook is dirt cheap these days, should you desire a replacement. Should you want to switch to Android, I have found that cheap tablets, $100-$150, don't compare in quality of the PlayBook build. (I replaced mine with a refurb Dell Venue 8 7000, which is a gorgeous tablet, but it'll be stuck on Lollipop 5.1 because Dell dropped building Android tablets.)