WLAN / WIFI Card Issues

Seems like a few of us are experiencing this issue. Unfortunately there is no one spot to centralize the issue (I've noticed messages in Hardware/Networking/Windows/Linux forums).

Please reply to this post if you are experiencing any or all of the following

Symptom

After standby or sleep, the Aspire refuses to reconnect over wireless. Only reboot or power off resolves this.

Wifi suddenly disconnects and wifi light is either off or on steady. Only reboot or power off resolves this.

Combined with either of the above, the wifi card may disappear from either device manager in XP or System info in Linpus

Perhaps if we have enough occurrences, then Acer will prioritize a fix.

How about making this a sticky item until it is resolved?

Here are some relevant posts

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=509

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=902

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1448

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1267

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1243

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1088

And in a bizarre coincidence...I just lost wireless posting this and had to save in a text file...geez...

 

Hmm... I dont think I have this problem. I know Acer is known for having problems after standby/hibernate mode. Their way of fixing it is through BIOS updates, so I guess we just have to wait for the next BIOS update.

 

how about flicking the wifi switch? will that work?
Does this only occur on the linux systems?

 

The switch doesnt seem to help...nor does disable/enable in windows. Seems to be in both XP and Linpus.

 

seems like we need a new BIOS update then.

 

Applying the custom desktop script seems to fix the loss of wifi after sleep.

have a read viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1256&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

 

I have the "sudden disappearance" of the WiFi card, disconnecting me from the network. I can get it back either by power off/on, or most times by just shutting the lid (to put it to sleep, I suppose), waiting a bit, and reopening. When it resumes from sleep the wireless reconnects.

I have run the "desktop customization" script referred to above for a more or less vanilla Xfce desktop, and the behaviour of the WiFi card was the same before and after doing so.

Will watch this thread for further reports and/or developments.

Pauline
Blue AAO Linux (Linpus Lite)

 

For those of you running XP with this problem, the following message may appear in Event Viewer

PlugandPlay Error

The device 'Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter' (PCI\VEN_168C&DEV_001C&SUBSYS_E008105B&REV_01\4&2803e7c1&0&00E2) disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal.

 

Considering that this disappearing WiFi card happens in both Linux and WinXP, this may be a dumb question, but does anyone know whether these symptoms occur in machines that have had Ubuntu installed?

 

I have had problems with wireless sometimes not working after coming back from sleep in Linpus Linux, but this seems to be a mostly software fault since I have always been able to regain connectivity by restarting NetworkManager, usually with a simple restart using the init script "sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart", though on a couple of occasions where that wasn't working I had to execute "sudo killall -9 NetworkManager" to kill off the old NetworkManager process before I could restart it, then it would work.

 

supposedly, upgrade the driver? (only for XP machines)

 

Well, I've downloaded the most recent drivers from

http://www.atheros.cz/download.php?atheros=AR5007EG&system=1

This one is Version: 7.6.0.239. The official Acer driver is Version: 7.6.0.224. Off hand, I've noticed the speed to be more consistant but I'll have to do more testing.

 

yeah,.. I have a prob with this

however I just have to hit the wifi on/off switch (twice obviously turn off wifi turn on wifi) to resolve the connectivity issues in my case

 

Same here. I guess the NetworkManager sometimes goes out of sync.

 

I've managed to fix the NetworkManager sync problems I was having with my linux version. see my posts in the alternative thread below:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1440

The symptoms I was having were.

I have had a power failure. after restarting the networking wouldn't work and I couldn't run the Network Center to restart networking, unless I restarted NetworkManager and the nm-applet as root. Fix is to delete the ~/.gconf/system/networking directory. This resets the networking config files forcing the NetworkManager to recreate them.

Hope this helps the linux users.

Roomonster

 

I have EXACTLY the same problem with my A150X!!! Sometimes my WLAN card disappears also suddenly while using it. Only rebooting is solving the problem.
UPDATE: in the system the Atheros card is still there, so when I deactivate it through the System and reactivate it, it reactivates itself, but it doesnt change anything: its still anoying:-(
Finally I found this thread, I posted the problem before in a german netbook forum (http://forum.eeepcnews.de/index.php), but no answer not yet.
I already reinstalled the WLAN drivers (from the website) but it didnt help. I didnt do a bios update not yet, some people seemed to have problems with the new BIOS.

I want to add one problem with my USB 3GModem (UMTS) HUAWEI E220:
After a while it also disappears suddenly but its easier to solve the problem, I just unplug it and plug it in again.

martin

 

I have reverted back to the 3109 bios and it seems that the disappearing wlan card problem hasnt re-occurred..yet.

So the combination of the A110 model, bios version 3114 and XP Service pack 3 seems to be bad...the bios change was the only thing I did today and so far the problem hasnt surfaced.

Based on the bios notes for v3114 though, it seems there are some fixes needed in this area...maybe the fixes made it worse...

 

My son noticed the Wifi not reconnected on waking from sleep problem yesterday. He moved wireless above ethernet in the network connection priority list (wireless was originally below ethernet). Not had the problem since, apparently.

 

So far, I've experienced this problem once since I got my Aspire One (WinXP version) about a week ago. During that time, I've come out of hibernate numerous times and only once did I experience the issue. However, it occurred almost exactly as described here, namely:

1) Come out of Hibernate; initially networking is working.
2) Suddenly, cannot connect to the Internet; Wifi LED is solid (stuck on)
- Attempting to disable/reenable Wifi network connection fails.
- Device Manager shows the device with an exclamation mark. (Not merely disabled, but indicates an error)
3) Rebooting did not completely solve the problem; after an initial reboot the Wifi device was missing from Device Manager. I had to shutdown and then boot up again and the problem went away.

Hoping that the problem isn't chronic or that Acer can come up with a fix soon.

Thanks everyone.

 

Hi folks!

I just bought my Aspire One 150L and installed XP on it. Since 2 days I recognized all the problems you mentioned in the first post. I updated the drivers to the newest version but no improvement. I hope Acer can fix that issue with the next Bios-update.

Cheers,