ACER 3680 wireless problems

I have recently purchased an acer 3680 as an on the road computer but I have issues with the wireless connection. Basically it connected once to our network but now will not. The computer was only purchased a month ago. It cant detect any wireless networks despite being lesss than a metre from the wap and despite the fact that another laptop can always connect to it. I have tried disabling wep hoping it would then see the network but cant. Wired LAN works fine. The system says the adaptor is fine and I have tried disabling it and enabling it, the driver is up to date. The only thing is that when it says it cant view any wireless networks it says make sure the wireless switch is on??????? Is there such a thing?? If so I cant see it. Any help would be greatley appreciated as I dont want to send it out to acer for service as Ill probably never see it again.

Also does anyone know how to increase the brightness of the screen. I can hardly see it and cant find anything in the graphics on board controls that will fix it.

 

For your screen brightness you can use the Acer Powerment program and change it, and/or use the "fnc+" and mine is the left and right arrows, not sure what it is for you.

 

Thanks that's done it.

 

Help my wife's laptop has the same problem. Broadband works fine with it when connected with a network cable but the inbuilt wireless does not seem to. Like original poster's problem, it says everything is fine but yet cannot detect any wireless connection (even though my own notebook does detect at least a dozen in neighbourhood). This is a new Acer Ferrari 3400 model. When first bought, I remember checking it out that wireless did work but she has not used it for awhile but now it no longer works

 

Look at the front of your chassis, where the lid closes down and meets the rest of the computer. The wireless switch should be there. Push it all the way to the right and then let it go back into its original position. That should do it I'm pretty sure most Acer's come with this switch. I don't know how it does it, but it literally turns off the wireless card. If you check your adapter details under the Driver tab in Device Manager, you'll notice that your adapter won't have a MAC address unless you enable it using the switch. Until you enable it through the switch, nothing will happen, even if Windows sees the adapter.

 

I just upgraded the drivers for the Atheros wifi card. It now registers 5/5 bars where it previously showed 3/5. other than that, the speed of the connection is the same.

 

Yup, what Zoom said ... WiFi can be enabled/disabled manually with a little switch ...now RTFM