Vista WLAN Problems

Installed Tiny Vista via USB and everything worked great... for about 2 hours. For some reason the WLAN driver does not load. Realtek RTL8101 Family PCI-E Fast Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0) keeps loading where the "Ethernet Controller" was when i first installed it. When i reboot Vista, it tries to auto install the driver, and then it says that the "Device Driver software was not successfully installed". I then try to uninstall but it automatically goes back to the failed driver when trying to install the WLAN driver. I've tried to disable auto driver install, but that did nothing. I even went to a restore point, but it wont go back. Any ideas?

GriFF

 

get the updated 8102 driver from windows update, the 8101 driver is incorrect and will give you that error.

the realtek is not your WLAN card, btw, it is the LAN card, the Atheros is your WLAN card.

 

Yea, I know the Atheros is the WLAN card, but the only adapter that shows is the RealTek. Its very strange. I just reinstalled TinyVista again and the WLAN is working. For some reason it always auto installs that 8101 driver. Doing a Windows Update now and will report back if that fixes the regular LAN driver. Thanks goofball,

GriFF

 

Well the WLAN was working all day today and then out of now where it just stopped working. Went to Device Manager and the only thing listed under Networks is the Realtek LAN driver. For some reason it just dropped the WLAN driver. Any body know how to fix this?

GriFF

 

I dont think i have ever had working lan from all my vista installs on any of my 3 AAO's.

 

No problems with wired or wireless network adapters on my vista home premium install. I'm using the drivers from Windows Update. Device Manager tells me it's version 7.6.0.172 dated 8/14/2008 (for the AR5007EG wireless adapter).

 

No issues with wired/wireless on AAO (2 of them) using XP or Vista. Could be driver issues (i have used the official acer ones for XP, used different ones from atheros for Vista however).

 

Using the same ones as you fdisker, Atheros AR5007EG version 7.6.0.172. Do you guys have the Atheros Client Utility running as well, or just the driver itself? It seams to happen intermittently. Was at school today on it for about 2 hours, then put her to sleep. Went outside and opened her back up to find that the driver was missing from Device Manager again. Its quite frustrating.

GriFF

 

I managed with Windows, did not install anything but the driver.

 

I spoke too soon about not having any problems. I'm now seeing the wireless network adapter disappear at random times today when running on battery. I have to do a shutdown/restart to get it to come back. I dropped back to a previous WHQL driver but it didn't help. I think this problem is being documented in another thread and the solution seems to be to downgrade the BIOS from .3114 to .3109. I haven't tried it yet.

 

No wireless disconnects since flashing the bios back to 3109 this morning.

Keeping fingers crossed.

 

I was also having the dreaded Wireless LAN disconnect problem until yesterday. The laptop came with, and I am still running BIOS 3.114. I had originally loaded the XP drivers from the Acer FTP site, which seemed to work with the exception of the problems noted here. After lots of searching for the Vista drivers, I found the 'Unofficial Atheros Driver' website and downloaded the AR5007EG driver:

http://www.atheros.cz/download.php?atheros=AR5007EG&system=3

I updated my Atheros driver with these, then ran Windows Update to get the driver currently installed on my One (version 7.6.0.172).

So far, no drops. I even had the laptop go to sleep and hibernate, and each time the wireless recovered. As an additional note, I installed the Launch Manager software from the Acer FTP site at roughly the same time. I found that it gave me the green notification text for FN key actions (i.e. Volume up and down, WLAN on and off, etc.). Now my One is PERFECT, running Vista Ultimate! Can't believe I got this for $250. I also picked-up the Icon DVD case from Radio Shack, as noted in another post on this site. $7.97 on clearance, and it fits my One perfectly.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...d+case&origkw=icon+dvd+case&parentPage=search

I'm very happy...

 

UPDATE:

I just had another disappearing WLAN issue (so much for my happy face :cry: ). However, It happened right after I changed my power scheme from 'Balanced' to 'High Performance'. I'm wondering if that was related or not, so I will do some testing tomorrow and report back...

 

I've been on the machine pretty much all day today (on and off the power cord) and haven't had a single drop since flashing the bios around 10am. I had four drops between 8am and 10am, prior to flashing back to the older bios.

I think we have a winner. .3109 will be staying on the One for the foreseeable future.

 

Keep us updated fdisker. Once dropped a restart will more times then not fix the problem. If you get no more drops let us know. How did you downgrade bios?

GriFF

 

Travelled from Ohio to Amsterdam over the past 12 hours. No drops in the any of the three airports and I've been using wifi on and off all day in the Amsterdam coffee shops. Zero wireless drops. As far as I'm concerned the bios downgrade resolved the problem. There are several threads about upgrading/downgrading the bios. I followed one of them and it worked perfectly.

I'm really enjoying the One today. Just drop it in my backpack and I can't even tell I'm carrying it. It's the perfect device for web browsing and email on the go. I'm actually streaming NFL football on it now from my media center pc in Ohio.

 

My WIFI card 'disappeared' in the Vista device manager twice now. Turning my A150 on and off solves the problem though. I'm running BIOS 3304 and driver version 7.6.0.172.

Can anyone confirm downgrading my bios will solve the problem? Would I lose any functionality by downgrading the bios?