WLAN / WIFI Card Issues

I have the same problem

 

I am having the same problem on my Aspire One (120gb, XP, 6-cell version), with the wifi randomly disappearing.. It happened twice today. I have Vista installed. Only shut down and then rebooting helps. On the Acer site I only see bios 3114...

Any solutions yet?

 

Nothing so far. Still waiting for either a bios fix or you can try bios 3109 which fixes the problem for myself and others. Older bios is hosted on an external non-acer site.

 

Is it safe to use the old bios on the new 6-cell 120gb model? what did they fix in the new firmware that might be broken/missing/worse in the old one?

 

Hi folks,

I don't know if it helps, but I had the same problem as you. I found out that the wifi-connection always breaks, when I lift up the AA1 holding it on the front side (or just "pushing" the case a little bit stronger on the plastic between the arrow-buttons and the wifi switch)..
When I then turned off the broken wifi, suspended the computer, woke it up again and turned on wifi - then it worked without any problem until ne next lift or "push"..

Can you reproduce this behavior? Because then it could be a hardware problem..
I went back to the shop where I bought it, changed it for another AA1 - and now the problem is gone..

sorry for my bad english..

regards

harald

 

As I mentioned elsewhere on this forum, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the Atheros AR5BXB63 card, using the second generation AR5007EG chipset, is not as reliable as the prior generation Atheros chipsets. I replaced the wi-fi card with the Gigabyte GNWI07HT-S0 which uses the AR5006EX chipset, and my wi-fi performance is now without issue. The wi-fi hardware no longer stops responding or disappears from device manager in XP.

Another member here installed an Intel 4965AGN (see viewtopic.php?f=40&t=1443), also apparently with good results.

A google search for 'AR5007EG' reveals a plethora of problems. So, if you plan on opening up your AA1 for some reason*, perhaps just change the wi-fi card while you have it open.

If you have changed the wi-fi card in your AA1, report your results here.

*Think carefully before opening your AA1, user-inflicted damage is not uncommon!

 

I'm having the same issue in xp and vista. I notice that if I set to off sometimes the led light stays on and no response or it will drop off the device manager list at off and med. setting. When I set the power saving to maximum it stays on longer than the other 2 modes. I tried different drivers still not helping. Can it be overheating. I had moved the atteni cable under the board where it touches the harddrive when I opened it last time. Just opened it the wifi card gets pretty hot seem to be overheating.

 

I changed my firmware to 3109, but just today I got the wifi dropping issue on Ubuntu. Any chance Acer would repair/replace my unit?

 

I just updated my wifi setting and vista compatiable drivers. So far I have been on it without dropping. Need some testing, but its a lot better than before where it drop every few min.

 

I'm having the same issues as everybody else with the adapter just quitting randomly and then disappearing in device manager. I've updated the driver, turned off power save, and also tried the Toshiba tool. No difference so far.

One thing that I just tried and so far it's working (might just be a coincidence) is going into services (XP) and finding "wireless zero configuration" and there is a tab called recovery. I've set all service failures to "restart service".
This is just a shot in the dark that I haven't seen posted yet.

I've started seeing other posts at other sites about the wireless failing in these neat little machines. I figured I'll just pop in a new card to get rid of the problem sooner or later.

 

i've been coming across this issue within windows xp sp3 on the 120gb version.

i think this must be bios or hardware related. sometimes rebooting doesn't help the situation....even rebooting into my linpus installation. the card refuses to come back on.

so, do i try and get it exchanged while i'm in my first 30 days or simply downgrade the bios? what a hassle!

 

Every time wifi disappears on my One I have to do a complete shutdown. Rebooting doesn't help, it has to really be off for a few seconds to work. Let's hope we'll get a BIOS update soon

 

A new BIOS is available. At least one change seems to be WLAN related.

 

I had seen that you'd updated your page, but... it's been a few days and still no update on the European ftp site. Have you used the new bios? Is it safe to download the asian version of the file?

 

Acer PanAm has also released the BIOS now, i've updated the post with links. All three files are bit for bit the same, so it's safe to flash either of them. The official ones just miss the release notes.

 

I just updated the 3304 bios and I disable all the power feature of the pci-e ar5007eg wireless card. I ran some test.

test 1. vista 7.6.0.126 ar5007eg transfering 6gigs off the wireless network. I get 2mb/sec~. It halts after a min or two into it. The led light is blinking. I get back the connection after refreshing it for 5-8min. I try again same. The led light constantly flashing windows halts the wireless.

test 2. vista 7.6.0.126 ar5007eg transfering 6gigs off the wireless network. Using 11b this time I get 700kb/sec~. It halts after a min or two into it. The led light is blinking. I get back the connection after refreshing it for 5-8min. I try again same. The led light constantly flashing windows halts the wireless.

test 3. vista 7.6.0.126 ar5007eg transfering 6gigs off the wireless network. Using microsoft wirelss router vs linksys router this time I get 1mb/sec~. It halts after a 3min~ or four into it. The led light is blinking. I get back the connection after refreshing it for 5-8min. I try again same. The led light constantly flashing windows halts the wireless.

Test4. Vista 7.6.0.126 ar5006egs transfering 6 gigs off the wireless network. I get 600k- 1.5mb/sec~. It keeps going, but eventually stalls after 10min~ and then halts. Led lights don't work with this version. Windows drops the wireless card its not found.

The wlan keep restarting service doesn't do anything. Selecting various setting in the driver, wireless profile, services, bios, pci-e power feature, etc. -nothing.

Atheros wlan pci-e card sucks. Might be overheating, but hair blower test couldn't confirm it didn't change the result. Time to replace it with something non-Atheros.

 

been using the new bios for a few hours tonight...trying to get the card to hang. so far, no problems at all! i'm siked! tomorrow is day 30 and so i was on the fence about returning/exchanging it. but, it looks like this has fixed it. thanks for the suggestion and all your help!

 

I agree that the AR5007EG card is sucky. However, my experience with Atheros based cards has generally been good in the past. So, I replaced the AR5007EG with an AR5006EX card (Gigabyte GNWI07HT-S0) - and wireless has been perfect ever since.

As a side note, I think some variable concerning the web cam is causing many system issues. It might be worth trying your tests again with the web cam disabled in device manager.

 

I disabled the web cam and tried with 260 drivers it doesn't seem to be halting. Transfered more than half of 6gigs now and its still going. I'll do some more downloading to test it.

 

I will try the web cam thing, maybe upgrade the bios next week.