Just a little note for those of you who may have an Acer Aspire One netbook and are having connectivity problems with your home or other wi-fi networks under Windows XP: update your drivers!
I like to play around between Windows and Ubuntu Netbook Remix (Linux) on my Aspire One, and one thing that came to light was that when I was in Windows, the network connection would be intermittent, at best. I could connect, but then after a few minutes I couldn’t reach the internet: the network indicator still said I was connected to the wi-fi network, but that was it. I couldn’t get anywhere. The only solution was to disconnect and then reconnect from the network. That gets to be a bit of a pain ever five minutes or so!
Since the wireless connectivity when I was in Ubuntu seemed to be fine, that suggested that it was a Windows driver issue. The Acer One uses an Atheros 5700EG wi-fi card, which – if you do a bit of searching on the web – has a bit of a bad reputation for network dropouts like this. I don’t really want to try and replace the actual wi-fi adapter, which involves tearing the netbook apart, so I was hoping a driver update would fix the problem.
To do this is easy:
- Click on Start
- Right click on the icon for My Computer.
- Select Properties
- Click on the Hardware Manager tab
- Click on the Device Manager button
- Click on the plus sign next to Network adapters to expand the selection
- Right click on the entry for the Atheros 5700EG Wireless Network Adapter
- Select Update Driver
- In the dialog window that pops up, make sure you have Install the software automatically checked
- If you are offered the option, make sure you select the one that has Windows check on-line for driver udpates
- It may take a few minutes (the installer has to download the driver from the Windows site – behind the scenes – and then install it), but the new driver should be installed, then just click Finish.
And that should be it! It’s been working fine on mine so far, and I hope this will help if you’re having similar issues.
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Tags: Acer Aspire One, Atheros 5700EG
