dv5z Atheros wifi starting to fail

I've had my dv5z since late August. It generally worked OK, but now the wifi card is failing frequently. Sometimes on a bootup it's not even detected. Generally it stops working within a few minutes of bootup, when it actually gets detected. Has anyone else seen this? I have a feeling it's related to the overall high operating temperature of the machine, baking the card...

When the card starts to fail, the driver is no longer able to initialize it: (using Linux)

Dec 29 18:34:59 violino kernel: [ 1522.478531] ath9k: driver unloaded
Dec 29 18:35:25 violino kernel: [ 1548.212047] ath9k: 0.1
Dec 29 18:35:25 violino kernel: [ 1548.212047] ath9k 0000:08:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
Dec 29 18:35:25 violino kernel: [ 1548.322439] ath_init: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 4294967291
Dec 29 18:35:25 violino kernel: [ 1548.322535] ath9k 0000:08:00.0: PCI INT A disabled

Googling for the HAL status message only gets 1 hit, on this Norwegian site.

http://www.diskusjon.no/lofiversion/index.php/t1035581.html

I'm also running Ubuntu 8.10...

When it's operating, the failures start like so:
Dec 27 12:15:47 violino kernel: [14099.310748] ForceXPAon: 0
Dec 27 12:17:21 violino kernel: [14193.479020] wlan0: No ProbeResp from current AP 00:12:17:26:56:10 - assume out of range
Dec 27 12:17:23 violino kernel: [14195.062940] ath_drain_txdataq: unable to reset hardware; hal status 4294936576
Dec 27 12:17:23 violino kernel: [14195.386940] ath_set_channel: unable to reset channel 1 (2412Mhz) flags 0x300e2 hal status 4294936577
Dec 27 12:17:23 violino kernel: [14195.387769] ath9k_config: Unable to set channel
Dec 27 12:17:24 violino kernel: [14196.862940] ath_drain_txdataq: unable to reset hardware; hal status 4294936576
Dec 27 12:17:25 violino kernel: [14197.190941] ath_set_channel: unable to reset channel 2 (2417Mhz) flags 0x300e2 hal status 4294936577
Dec 27 12:17:25 violino kernel: [14197.190941] ath9k_config: Unable to set channel

Has anyone else seen this? If not, I suspect you're going to soon... I don't think it's a driver issue, since things were working fine before and the software hasn't changed. It just looks like the hardware is dying in use.

 

Some more info... When the card is working, Linux sees it as:

lspci -v
...
08:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 1381
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at d1200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable- Mask- TabSize=1
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting <?>
Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel <?>
Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
Kernel driver in use: ath9k
Kernel modules: ath9k

When it starts failing, the card's PCI config space is corrupted:
lspci -v
...
08:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev ff) (prog-if ff)
!!! Unknown header type 7f
Kernel driver in use: ath9k
Kernel modules: ath9k

 

Not sure if it affects the DV5z, but many of HP's other nVidia based notebooks may be prone to hardware failure that results in the wireless card not being detected (it's a chipset issue). The dv5z isn't on HP's affected list, but neither is my sister's tx1000z, which suffers the same issue, and shares the same chipset with the ones listed on the list. Good luck.

 

The dv5z has an AMD/ATI chipset that was engineered to withstand real-world thermal stress. The common failing wireless issue is strictly a NVIDIA chipset problem.

In this case... it could be the wireless card failing once it heats up, it could be a Linux driver issue, it could be a BIOS issue (flash in the latest BIOS just to be thorough)... I'd test it in Vista to rule out an OS issue. Or, get a Fedora 10 Live disc and see if it works better. Fedora is more bleeding-edge and they put a lot of work into wireless updates in F10. Given how recently drivers became available for your card:
http://madwifi-project.org/wiki/news/20080725/ath9k-atheros-unveils-free-linux-driver-for
I'd give F10 and/or the latest Ubuntu test release a try.

 

Woops, forgot it was ATi based!

 

Well as I said, everything was working OK before with the driver in the 2.6.27 kernel. But anyway, I built the latest driver from here http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download#DownloadlatestLinuxwirelessdrivers and that didn't improve things.

It's pretty obvious to me it's not a driver / software issue, since the problem cropped up even though no software had changed, and even a broken driver can't cause lspci to read invalid data, or cause the device to simply not appear on a cold boot.

I guess I can try getting the current BIOS, I still have the original BIOS the machine shipped with (F.08)...

It really appears to be an overall system heat problem; even my wired ethernet stops working after a few minutes too. By the way, I was using a cooling pad before but forgot to use it these past two days. I'm using it again now and things appear to be behaving better. Still, I'll probably wind up sending it back to HP for repair.