New G73SW Incompatible with Netgear Router?

Just opened my G73SW Last night after work, was so excited to get it booted up and run a few tests on it, but nope, wouldn't connect to my house's wireless connection.

Here's the weird situation that Asus support found unique, the G73 is detecting my home's wireless, in fact it's displayed as a WPA securitized with "Excellent" signal, but when you go to connect and type in the correct passkey, it nearly immediately says that it can't connect.

1. Diagnosing the problem with troubleshooter has the G73 blaming it on the Netgear router, tell you to reset the router. Didn't think that would do anything but I reset it twice anyways, didn't do anything. Tried different security settings for the router and nothing worked.

2. Connected to ethernet fine and downloaded latest driver for Atheros AR9285 and installed it (wish there was a "installation complete!" prompt at the end) Still didn't make a difference

3. Here's the best part, called Asus support and the phone connection was terrible with my landline, but they still got across the idea for me to uninstall the driver and reboot. Bad idea, after restarting, the G73 said there was a problem with installing the software, and the support technician said "O that's bad, it was supposed to automatically install the driver" (Thanks for telling me after uninstalling, my fault for being sheep I suppose), and he was about to tell me how to factory restore when... phone signal completely died out.

4. Tried calling back, but after going through two prompts and hearing, "this call may be recorded" the phone goes silent... you're on the line, but nothing is going on. This continued for the next three hours while I search for a solution online. Finally I just F9 it and restored to factory default, driver is back, but computer still won't connect to my home's wireless. Back to square one.

5. After tearing my hair out for 6 hours, I'm about to go to sleep when I decide to see if it's just my home's wireless, activate the hotspot on Android phone... and wireless connects. So it's not the Atheros device I don't think?

Any help at all regarding this issue would be greatly appreciated and good for my blood pressure.

 

Hi,

I don't believe there is a compatibility issue as we have connected G73SW's to a Netgear Wireless Router in our retail shop with no problems whatsoever.

As well as updating your Atheros drivers you could also try updating the firmware on your Netgear router to see if this resolves the problem.

 

The problem is somewhere in the settings of either the router or the adapter. I had problems with low wireless speeds with my intel 6200 and linksys E3000 after flashing to a newer firmware and had to manually set the channel on the 5GHz band to get everything working at 300mbps. The problems you are experiencing is probably something similar.

I will probably be switching to dd-wrt soon or reverting to the previous firmware which in my case seemed to require less tweaking to get it working as i wanted it to.

 

Drivers and stuff here
G73 Series Driver and Application Reference

But as said before, update the Router Firmware first...
I had to do that on all my Netgear stuff at work.

WHat Netgear router do you have Model and version #

 

I just got my new G73SW-A1 yesterday also. Mine hooked up to my Netgear
WNR3500L right away and worked fine all night.

Awesome laptop so far

Good luck getting your's connected.

Jim

 

WGT624v3 Netgear router... which seems to have quite a few complaints about it online, when I try to scan for new updates, it says that the attempt failed

 

I'm a computertard so I'm just trying everything I can to figure this out, needed this up and running 3 days ago Thanks to everyone's input so far.

1. Main thing that seems to go wrong is that I have to use 10.0.0.1 instead of the normal 192.168.1.1 that most people use to access Netgear, and when I'm in there, the search for firmware fails and if I recall properly, when I tried to manually update firmware through the upload option, that failed too.

2. Second thing that stands out is, when Asus support had me uninstall the Atheros AR9285 device and reboot my system, there was an error saying it couldn't install the hardware and supposedly the device was supposed to reinstall itself? I did a factory restore and got the device back in device manager, but it seems to me something is irregular here?

3. Pretty sure this isn't a issue, WGT624v3 is a 108 Mbps router, and I've heard claims that Atheros AR9285 works at a cap of 75 mbps? But this sounds like the speed is just limited, shouldn't affect me connecting.


In a rush to fix this issue, so unless I can figure this out in the next two days, I'm thinking about returning the laptop or buying a new router.

I've never switched a router before so is any downloading or changes have to be done to all my home's computers if I get a new one? And which routers would be suggested for the Asus G73SW?

I'd rather get a new router since I don't know how Newegg's return policy works and I think it's mainly the router's fault anyways

 

I am sure you found this http://kbserver.netgear.com/pdf/wgt624v3_ref_manual_25Apr05.pdf
The Manual....

When you tried to update the Firmware, did you dowload the file first to a PC that is wired connected to the router?
If not here is the link WGT624v3 Firmware Version 2.0.26_1.01 NA

Please follow the direction from Netgear.

Also this Router is OLD.. I would by a new router that fits your budget..
Newegg.com - Computer Parts, Laptops, Electronics, HDTVs, Digital Cameras and More! can help sourt that out.
Then look around at your local stores to find what you want.

The fact is it should work, but it might be told old to support these Atheros based card set, they give me the most issues at work.
The Drive on the laptop is 90% of the issue. It needs to be the most current to work...

Have you pluged in with a wired connection?

 

Answering in Order:

Read through that manual (pretty long) and didn't really find anything that I haven't tried or pertains to my situation

I have tried both autoupdating AND downloading the file and manually installing the firmware on my desktop which is wire connected to router.

I am looking around for a new router to pick up, and studying up on the terminology to make a solid buy, but while I wait to get that, I want to make sure that it's the routers fault that the laptop wireless isn't working. Does the fact that the Atheros card refuse to self-install on reboot mean anything?

Yes, Telnet Ethernet works fine


What I will do in 3 hours when I get home from work:

Factory Reset Router and see if it'll let me update firmware then.

Do a ipconfig /all on the laptop set to wireless and display the results here

 

To test the wireless, go to Starbucks or Mcdonals.

try and connect to the free wifi.
Search fro there signal. if you see there signal you are good.
but connect any ways. open a browser to agree to there terms.

If you are going to Best Buy or some big brand name store.
Ask them to help test your old router first.
THey might do it for free... tell them if it fails you will buy a new on the spott..

Or find a friend who is in IT to come over and help...