Funky WiFi behavior

Updating to the newest 3304 bios from 3114 seemed to fix my net card disappearing issues. I was going to order an Intel net card from ebay but now it seems to be fixed.

 

the new bios seems to have fixed this issue, but not in vista! i decided to give vista a try and it is so much worse than on xp. completely annoying and frustrating. to make matters even worse, not only does it lose the card frequently, it won't find it again unless you shutdown and then bring it back up. restarting does not help! anyone having better luck?

 

bump
wifi issues here too

 

Hi again.

Since my last post things have evolved a bit for me.

After 7-8 days of stable wi-fi the issue returned.

Since I don't have any confidence in Acer to be able to fix the problem quick I bought an intel card - 4965AGN
(My earlier experince with Acer is very slow repair - and I don't wan't to turn my machine in only to have it returned after 8 weeks with no repair. So even if it seems a little unfair I deciced to buy the Intel card.)

Price approx. 25 dollars.

Since the change 4 days ago I have had stable wi-fi.

For installation I used the antenna connections 1 and 2 (omitting connection 3 as I dont have the appropriate antenna and don't need N support)

I think it's a shame for Acer with such a nice machine and this totally annoying error.
But that's another discussion and possibly another thread.

I'm not bitter in any way - I know Acer and their (at least in Denmark) sluggish support. But I wanted the Aspire One and bought one. So from me there's no blaming. I'm just glad that the issue is fixable by my self.

 

Thanks! Could you give some detail on how you swapped out the WiFi card?

 

Hi sephage and others.

I took the AAO apart - There's an excellent step by step instruction somewhere else in this forum.
Try searching for adding more RAM.
Don't be afraid to break anything. If you do it gentle everything should work out fine.
When you have the AAO apart it's very straight forward. Remove the screw that holds the Atheros card in place and disconnect the 2 wires - again gentle do not use force.
Take notice of which antennawire goes to where - There's two wires to connect the antenna. I don't know if the way they are connected makes any difference.
On my Atheros card there was tiny numbers 1 and 2 on the card itself.
The wires, white and black, I connected to the Intel cards connectors 1 and 2.
The intel card has 3 connectors. You only need the third if you should run the card in N-mode.
(This involves replacing the antenna in the AAOs screen as well.)

Before the swap of cards I uninstalled the Atheros driver from controlpanel.
And if the AAO is your only machine you should download the latest drivers and utility from intels website before the swap.

If you need N mode from the intel card there's a walkthrough in this forum as well on how to dismantle the screen and install a dual antenna (with 3 wires).

I did install the intel ProSet utility and made the wireless connection through it.

Hope this information can help you and others

 

There is other way of installung third antenna w/o opening LCD: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/New-Hitachi-Mini- ... 911.c0.m14

This antenna can be placed along HDD/speaker cable in the bottom of case...

 

I had this problem, Wifi tended to go and come back, I disabled the power save mode or something like that (it's somewhere here in this topic) then restarted the pc and the wireless problems have ceased.

 

Mine has been trouble free since installing Bios 3304. I left the power saving on.

 

Has anyone running Vista seen this issue fixed by the bios update? Like I said previously, my wifi is working perfectly on XP and Linpus. Vista is another story altogether. I'd love to be able to use it, but haven't figured out how to fix it.

 

I had this issue and returned the unit for a refund. It's BS to buy a new machine and have these types of issues. Acer MUST KNOW they are putting this junk out in the market. No wonder it's so cheap. Buyer beware! :roll:

 

I have Windows Vista installed on my 120G/XP AA1. I have noticed slow wi-fi (sometimes on battery sometimes not). I also noticed i was unable to transfer large files, after a few mins of transfer the rate (as shown by vista) drops to < 1M per sec. The file then errors out with a file is not at location. (But it is) I forced my Router to 11g mode, then tried to do the same on the AA1. I noticed that there is no 11g only option. I have 11b+g and 11b only, no 11g only. Is there a way to force the Wireless Card to do 11g only? After making these changes I reboot the router and AA1, wifi speed was up to 10MBps (shown by file copy dialogue) the file woild successfully transfer. If I removed the power cord during transfer (even with a full battery), the AA1 would soon after, slow down and then error the copy (drop connection?). But the network is still available. Repeating the file copy yields the same results. Pluging back in the power cord did not return the wifi card to correct settings, still slow. I had to reboot to get things back up to speed. I "guess" this is cause by the wifi card restarting when changing power mode to battery? Is this normal behavior for wifi cards? Shouldn't the wifi card speed up when nolonger on battery? Later I will try disabling the power mode features of the wifi card and post results. I would prefer full speed wifi ILO battery, I turn off the wifi when on battery and not using it, so thats not an issue for me.

 

Just saw that some new drivers are floating around for both XP and Vista. Hope to test it out tonight. The drivers are being discussed over here:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5317

New version is 7.6.1.149 (though someone also said they had gotten their hands on a more stable version, 7.6.1.140).

 

I just posted in another thread, but wanted you guys to get the update too:

I've been testing it off and on since last night. So far I *think* that it's working well. At the very least I have had zero issues that required me to restart the laptop. I've tested it plugged in, coming up from standby, coming up from hibernate, on a/c power, on battery only.... the signal is still there. I've been streaming music via Pandora to test it. By this point, I would have lost the device at least once.

I did just have something funny happen, but I can't be sure that it wasn't the wireless connection here at work that caused the hiccup. For a few seconds, Pandora stopped playing and gmail gave a connection error. Everything was back quickly though. Either way, this is WAY better than having to shutdown just to get the device back. I'll continue testing and report back.

Also, another user on the other thread reported having zero issues since installing the new drivers. I for one am very excited to finally have a usable system!

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=1477&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=120

 

Too good to be true, I guess. While performance was much much better, the card errored out again. I set the laptop to hibernate when I was at work and when I got home, though it connected to my router, the network card did not attain an IP address. When I tried repairing the connection, the network card disappeared from the device manager and would not come back until I shut down and restarted the pc.

 

Call me crazy, but I can't get the new atheros wifi driver to install on my AA1 (Win XP Home)...?

 

Got the latest XP home driver for the WiFi.

Performance seems better overall, but still the occasional issue with the WiFi not coming back after StandBy (and sometimes, though less frequently, after Hibernate).

 

update - upgraded also to the latest BIOS... still has the same StandBby / resume issue.