ESP8266 Community Forum

To get the "AT+CWLAP" command to work, set the CWMODE to both(STA and AT) by using the command "AT+CWMODE=3" and retry the AT+CWLAP command. hope this works... it does for me

In my case, basic commands like AT, AT+RST was fine, I only get ERROR when try to use CWLAP and other similar.
What I have done is:

AT+RST
AT+CWMODE=3 or 1
AT+RST
AT+CWLAP

in this order it worked fine and showed available wifi networks.
I hope it will help someone.