Upgrading wireless card and DVD burner in Asus Z83V

Hi all;

Good day!

I have been reading from this forum for a while and I find people in this forum very friendly and I can find answers to my problem most of the time. I have 2 questions about my Z83V and I hope I can find answers from the experts here.

I too, have been suffering from the conection problem of Intel 2915 wireless card and the CD/DVD burning problem with the TSSTCorp TL-532A burner. I'm thinking of upgrading both:

1. Is Atheros AR5006XS compatible with Z83V?
2. Any recommendation for a decent dual layer DVD burner? Ideally those will install with minimum modification for both hardware and firmware.

Any advise is welcomed and thanks in advance.

 

Any advise? Nobody?

 

Perhaps updating your cards drivers or the routers firmware will help before you investigate replacing the card.

I personally like NECs. Sometimes fit and firmware can be issues.

 

I brought the notebook back to Asus and they gave me a new burner right there and even gave me a blank CD for testing. It burns OK now so the burner problem is solved for the moment. I must say their service is very good and I don't regret buying an Asus even for one second.

ZaZ:

Thanks for your reply. I have upgraded the router's firmware to the latest version but the problem persists. I even tried a fresh install of XP and improvement is only marginal, if any. Everytime I notice a speed drop, I have to go into adaptor settings and change "ANY" settings and click ok. Then the speed will become normal again. Any thoughts on why this might happen?

Thanks.

 

The 5006XS works in it, at least it should, since IIRC, it is a mini PCI slot, and the Z83v's wireless is also a mini PCI.

 

Asus have anything to say about it? Perhaps something in the power management settings. Could you take it elsewhere to test it?

 

First of all I wanna thank Coriolis for the answer, that's what I needed to know.

ZaZ: My power management setting is set to max, and I've tried every other suggestions I found here but no luck. When I was at Asus, the guy connected my laptop to their wireless network with the card in question and there were no dropping in signal strength. He said he had seen some problem cards that will show signal and speed drop in their wireless environment in 10 mins or so but he didn't see that happen with my card, so there's nothing he can do about it and it has to be problems with my router.

I am using my laptop in 3 places mainly and there are 4 routers that I can connect to: 1 linksys wireless B at my office, another one of the same router at my gf's, 1 Netgear B and 1 linksys wireless G at home. They're all upgraded to the latest firmware, and I have played around with the settings in the routers with no effect. I have to install a secondary router (linksys wireless G) because I can't get a good signal with the netgear downstair in the living room, while my gf's hp and my brother's IBM are connected without any problems. Anyways I experience speed and signal drops with all 4 routers so it's hard for me to believe that there are problems with all 4 of them, especially the one in my gf's because the house is in a new division and there's no other wireless network around it.

I also installed the latest driver (driver only) from Intel and it seemed to have improved the stability a bit. It will keep the signal strength to the max for about 90% of the time, but I can't install the latest PROset software because it conflicts with hcontrol.exe so I can't turn the wireless off and on when needed (I know I won't be able to turn the wireless on and off with "FN+F2" if I install an Atheros card in it but at least I'll get a solid connection to the network). Also I still exprience speed drops and I still have to change an adaptor setting, any setting, to get the speed back up. Based on that I told him that there might be a problem with the card itself and I told him to take a look at this forum to see similar cases.

I want to see if there's a chance that they'll replace the card so I rolled the driver back to 9.0.25 downloaded from Asus website and see if the problem is more obvious. I'll still see speed drops but the signal strength seems to be pretty stable so I haven't brought it back to Asus yet. I'll wait and see.

BTW it seems like they don't know hcontrol.exe will conflict with the latest PROset software so I asked him to report this problem to the department responsible. Hopefully they'll listen and release an update of either the hcontrol.exe or the wireless dirver. That should be a good news to all Asus users if they do.