Wifi adapter not found in Linpus and XP, hardware problem?

I just bought an Acer Aspire One AOA110 (8gig Linpus version) and have been having a ridiculously hard time trying to figure out how to get the wireless to work. I will try to be as clear as possible in explaining the problem and the solutions I have tried to no avail.

I bought the netbook from a friend, and he swears he hadn't had any problems with it beforehand. He gave the machine to me with a fresh install of the Linpus OS, and absolutely everything other than Wifi was working as expected.

IN LINPUS - I plugged it into my router and could get online no problem. In Linpus, the Wifi switch worked fine, showing me the icon overlay for both on and off, however, no Wifi networks were listed in the connection manager, and I know for a fact that there are multiple networks in range. Clicking re-scan gives me the same result, zero networks showing up. I tried manually entering the network ID and password, but that didn't work either. In the device settings, the LAN adapter was showing up, but both WLAN and 3G were listed as "N/A."

I am not a big computer guy by any means, but I do have some experience with Linux, and I figured it may have just skipped on the drivers when he did a clean install of the OS before giving it to me. I loaded up a bootable copy of XP onto my USB stick and installed that hoping that installing the drivers manually would fix the problem.

IN WINDOWS XP PRO SP3 - After a clean install of XP SP3, I copied all of the Aspire One drivers (From Acer's website) to an SD card and loaded them one by one onto the computer. I had trouble with the webcam driver, but eventually got it working fine. The Atheros WLAN 7.6.0.224 driver on the other hand did not work. Half way through the installation I get an error message that says the device can not be installed unless it is plugged in. I searched through this forum and found someone who mentioned using an older driver from Samsung's website, tried that one, and the utility itself loaded fine, but once again, no dice on the WiFi.

In the device manager, everything appears as normal, but under the "Network Adapters" entry I have a big yellow question mark and it says "Other Devices." I assume that this is my WLAN card that it fails to recognize/install. If I click the + beside this entry it says "Network Controller," again with a big yellow question mark beside it. In Windows XP, the wifi switch on the front of the Aspire One works fine. Flipping it gives me the green "Wireless Lan Enabled" message. I do not have a wireless networks icon in the system tray or in the network connections page in the control panel.

Sorry for the long winded post, but I wanted to be as clear as possible. Has anyone dealt with his problem? Is it possible that the WLAN card in the Aspire One is fried? Is there a third party driver that I could try? The reason I think it is a hardware problem is because the WiFi adapter failed to install in both Linpus and Windows XP.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I just read somewhere that the Wifi switch on the front of the Aspire One is supposed to light up. This has not lit up in both Linpus or XP. Does this mean the adapter is fried? The switch does give me the enable/disable message, but obviously it is not communicating with the device itself.

 

I made 2 so I figured I'd go for the triple-post.

The exact error message I get is: "The Device may not be present or could have been ejected/unplugged from the system. Insert or Reinsert Now."

 

Sounds like the mini-pcie WiFi card either has been removed from the system, or is dead.

If you purchased the AAO from new in a store, you should RMA it.
If you purchased it used from some shady internet seller, contact that person for a return, although you might find that the person isn't available any more. In that case you are SOL.

You can dissassemble the AAO (pictorial howtoo is available both here, and elsewhere on the internet), and check if the WiFi card is missing, or just might be unseated in the connector, and exchange it for another WiFi adapter.
It can also be something as simple as the previous owner having exchanged the WiFi adapter to another chipset based adapter. In that case the default Atheros driver in the Linpus recovery image wouldn't work, and neither would the Atheros driver you installed in XP.