Z71V: Wireless light blinking?

So after having my laptop maybe 2 months now, i FINALLY got a wireless mini-pci card (bad ebay sale and getting refund took so long, then had to purchase again).

Installed it today and it works great (Atheros CM9). One thing though, no matter what I do, whether the wireless is on or disabled, the yellow light on the laptop is ALWAYS blinking. It is incredibly annoying...just always blinking even if wireless is enabled or disabled.

Is this normal? Is there a way to turn it off?

 

strange. that is not normal. the LED is really adapted for the intel card. With the intel card, solid light is connected, blinking is not connected but network present and no led is either disabled or no network present. When I put in my Atheros mini-pci (which is now in my z70va) into my z71v the LED stayed solid. So I don't know why it's blinking. That's not normal. Are you using the latest ATK drivers? What atheros software are you using? I was using teh drivers in the list at www.builtonasus.com

 

I am using the exact drivers that Whiteheat claims to use as well, the WinXP beta drivers. He has never reported any problems with the drivers.

What are the ATK drivers?

To get this to work, I installed the hardware wireless card, installed drivers and ACU and selected ACU as primary controlling software, and that was it.

 

i don't understand what you mean when you say WinXP beta drivers AND ACU? The ATK driver I am using is on the same driver list page... I'm using "Asus ATK0100 Driver File Version 1043.2.15.49". As for drivers for the atheros card, all I had to run was the "Atheros Wireless Driver Version 4.2.1.56 and Client Utility Version 4.1.2.25 - INF Date 5-5-2005". I didn't have to install any "beta drivers" separately.

 

The ACU is the Atheros Client Utility. It was installed when I installed the drivers.

so whats the ATK? Is it like a big batch of drivers for all sorts of devices in one file?

When I installed the card i started the laptop. When the new hardware wizard came up i pressed cancel. Then I opened the drivers i had downloaded (from the netgate.com site, the WinXP BETA drivers, supposed ot be the newest), and it installed the drivers and ACU.

 

ATK is the asus ACPI driver. It lets you have access to the extra buttons but also provide proper ACPI function (i.e. LED's). Now the z71v is sort of an exception with the WLAN since it doesn't seem to be controlled by the ACPI driver, but it's worth a shot. Anyway, the driver you got from netgate may be the problem. As I said, I just downloaded and installed the ACU program (it comes with a driver).

 

whoa thanks a ton flaxx! I never bothered to check Whiteheat's thread on that board (the extensive driver list)...those ones seem to be more up to date than the beta ones he used when he originally installed the card (beta 3.x compared to 4.x).

Uninstalled ACU and drivers, rebooted, installed new drivers and ACU. Connected to the internet again after making my wireless profile, and the light is off!!!

thanks a ton!

 

you're most welcome. glad i could be of some help.

 

i have tried to install Intel 2200 & 2915 wireless mini PCI card with Asus original driver CD, z71v works fine, connection is perfect even disable and enable the wireless connection before and after.

 

argh new problem now...when I installed those drivers, apparently it changed something. So now when i turn my laptop on, it asks my username and password to log in to Windows. This is annoying because the system doesn't fully get into Windows until you log in. Also when I shutdown, it doesn't give me the standard 3 button options, it has a dropdown list.

Is there any way to set Windows back the way it was?

 

Hmm...
Go into the control panel and select "User Accounts"
Choose "Change the way users log on or off"
From there, select the box that says "Use Welcome Screen"

That should do it...

 

When I click Choose the Way Users...etc, it gives me this popup:

"A recently installed program has disabled the Welcome screen and Fast User Switching. To restore these features, you must uninstall the program. The following file name might help you identify the prgram that made the change: athgina.dll"

hmmm....sounds like the Atheros software is pretty controlling over windows...

 

Indeed, it appears that Atheros software wants to take over!
Is there a setting within the Atheros software to change it? I have intel wifi... so I'm quite limited in my knowledge of Atheros.

 

wow Whiteheat is amazing. I asked on his boards and he had the instant answer.

He found the exact registry key that I needed to delete (related to the athgina.dll file), and once that was removed I was able to access all the options in the User Accounts under Control Panel.