Asus is shooting itself an own goal with useless WiFi

It is the secong Asus I put my hands on and both laptops had this issue. I can't remember how did I solve it with the first one.
Anyway, here's the story.

WiFi in F3M (Atheros) worked for one day after installing fresh XP but now although it is detected and listed without problems in the Device Manager, it cannot detect any network (there are 8). Laptop starts with the wifi light off. The manual switch at the front does not turn on the light, however Fn+F2 turns it on. Nevertheless, still can't detect any networks.
I installed back original Vista from recovery dvd but it's just the same. Wireless Console 2 says "No Wireless".

In linux everything works fine without a glitch (wifi lamp stays off, though).

What in the world is Asus doing to their otherwise excellent laptops?
Asus veterans, please help me to enable this bloody WiFi.

 

I have the same problem with my U6S-A1 but the wifi works fine. The Wifi led is off and it was on for a few minutes before under Windows XP or Vista.

 

Well, WiFi led on or off does not really bother me.
I just want WiFi working, otherwise this laptop is almost useless.

 

It can only be a driver issue... so try updating / downgrading WiFi drivers. Maybe use the card manufacturer's driver, instead of ASUS'.

Upgrading the ACPI drivers and hotkey utility is also worth a try, since they are related to the power states of the WiFI card (including on or off).

 

Well, I already tried all drivers I could find. I also installed some software from asus but I don't know which one of them is a hotkey utilty. How is it called?
Where can I get ACPI driver for Asus?

Anyway, below is a short story of this laptop.

I bought it few days ago. It came with Vista preinstalled and working wifi. I didn't test it much.

1. I installed XP after 2 minutes - Wifi worked fine. I just installed the drivers downloaded from Asus. No software, no Wireless Console.
2. The next day laptop stoped detecting wireless networks.
3. On the third day, after playing with different drivers, Wifi console and Atheros' software - all to no avail - I formated the drive and installed XP the same way as the first time and...
4. Nothing! Card is installed and supposedly ON but can't detect any networks (meanwhile I tried livecd linux and it used wifi no prob).
5. Reformat and restre factory preinstalled Vista. Again, nothing.
5. Reformat, installed XP. Obviously still no success but at least system will be ready once I find friggin soultion.

 

asus does not use atheros wifi card sin the states
u6s has no wifi issues. ot inherent ones anyways. i can only add that installing xp your self on any asus core 2 duo model is a hard task. we do it for a living and i can say it is a lengthy process which requires lots of prior experience.
the u6s does not need any special bios or driver to make xp work it just needs prior experience. without that you will run in to an array of issues

 

ACPI driver is called "ATK driver" by ASUS. ATK Hotkey is responsible with the hotkeys.

Also check the Info Booth, there is a link to a quick guide on installing XP on an F3. Maybe you can use it.

 

I'm not sure this applies to the Atheros, but I can tell you for the Intel that there is a special module written specifically for that laptop that the integrator must add to the drivers for the LED and switch to work. The LED and switch are irrelevent to the system without that module.

The fact that Linux works and Windows doesn't points to the radio probably being turned off in the software. The Intel one usually has a menu item that allows you to turn on and off the radio. If you don't see any networks under Windows, the radio is probably still off.

 

That's Intel's idea for their Centrino platform and in order to qualify as a Centrino platform notebook it must have:
- Intel CPU
- Intel Chipset mainbaord
- Intel Wireless card

The ATK driver and wireless console is not made to turn on/off the wireless cars not made by Intel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Centrino

 

Oh, my email notification didn't work.

E.B.E. -> google is not very helpful with finding Info booth and this article. Would you mind sharing a link to it?
As for the ACPI - That's some substantial idea. I will tell the laptop holder to try it.

Geared2play.com -> I'm not sure what do you mean by mentioning u6s. This F3M is from UK. Also, my laptop is not core 2 duo but Turion X2. I deal with XP installations since 2001 and with laptop systems since 2005. Only Asus' wifi made troubles for me so far. It's a pitty cause they make such cool laptops otherwise.


An interesting and not related note:
When I replaced this Atheros with Broadcom, laptop feigned dead. Also, when I started it without the card inside, then went to standby, put Broadcom inside and tried to return – dead as well. Is there some electrical incompatibility of Asus and Broadcoms?

 

Seems like you didn't understand GentechPC (Ken's) posts at all.
Your F3M would require an Intel wireless card for Wifi to work properly in Vista. This is a Intel chipset requirement and it was designed to only support Intel based wifi cards in Vista.

It will not work in Vista with Atheros or Broadcom cards.

Having it work in a Linux based OS is not surprising do to the open source/GNU support, however in Windows, Intel chipset drivers will not allow the laptop to support anything other than Intel. This applies not just to ASUS but to pretty much all manufacturers that launch Intel based platforms.

 

With all due respect D3X, what are you talking about?

1. F3M is based on Nvidia chipset (NVIDIA C51MV / MCP51) and Asus is shipping it with Atheros card and Vista on board. It has nothing to do with Intel.
2. My F3M came with Vista just the same and wifi worked no problem.
3. Why are you talking about Vista, anyway? I use XP!

 

Impactor, the link to the Info Booth is in my signature. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier. You can find the XP-downgrade guide for a certain subtype of the F3 (don't remember which) there.

 

Sorry!! My bad, should have done some research! Well, I'm gonna try and redeem myself for that embarrassing response

I'm willing to bet the issue is the Nforce drivers/chipset/SMbus that's causing this in Windows XP. I did a quick search and found that this was happening on desktops as well, and I'm willing to bet that they didn't fix it for the notebooks based on the same chipset. My suggestion is to download different versions including old ones of the XP chipset drivers and try them.