Atheros seems to need mini-dock to work correctly.

[rush242]

So here's an odd dilemma.

I installed the Atheros card last week as an upgrade, and all was fine. I removed the old drivers, cleaned the registry, installed the new drivers, installed the card, rebooted, and it found the card and all was well.

The machine found the two wireless networks I have, a BT Home Hub for the main connection, and a Linksys WRTP54G for Vonage. I entered the passwords and all was well. In fact, the Fn + F5 worked for the first time in ages. Every time I booted it, everything worked perfectly.

EXCEPT when I took the machine to school. At skool, all the wireless zones are Wi-Fi 802.11b compatible, although the majority of zones have now been upgraded to Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g. When I booted the machine, it would run those little black and white bars along the base of the screen and the card would show up in the taskbar with a red x on it. Sometimes it would give me the "Windows did not Start correctly screen" and give me the option to use the last know good configuration, safe mode, et cetera.

Once I got it booted, If I hit "repair connection," it would give me the little bubble that says there are wireless networks in range and that if I click the bubble I can see them and connect. Except that, when I do so, the screen comes up and says there are no wireless networks in range. If I check in the networks listing, the two that I use at home are GONE, simply not there. If I tell it to refresh the networks in range, it finds nothing.

Of course, then I would bring it home, place it in the dock, boot it, and all was well. The two profiles here at home appear out of nowhere after having been gone at skool.

So today, to try to figure out what went wrong, I tried booting it at home without using the mini-dock, and I had the same problem I had at school. The "I-didn't-shut-down-properly-or-I'm-recovering-from-hibernation" black and white bars roll across the bottom of the screen, it sometimes boots fine, and when it does, I get the same problem happens with the wireless as noted above.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? In essence, it seems the Atheros card DOESN'T work unless the computer is booted in the mini-dock. Needless to say, that ain't good and makes the card worthless.

Anyone?

[sjthinkpader]

Assuming you have the AR5001x miniPCI card, the most compatible driver at install time is Atheros ver330156 driver and not the later ones.

After you installed this Atheros driver, manually update it to the latest IBM a/b/g driver (not the a/b/g II driver). Manually select the driver and don't allow Windows to search for it.

The IBM driver has the best compatibility with AC.

[rush242]

Is there a way to check exactly what card went in there without opening it up?

This is the card:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0194153451

And the FRU, 93P4262, comes back from ThinkWiki as an Atheros AR5004X. The driver in there now is 4.1.2.156 dated 02/05/2007.

So you think I should uninstall that and try that earlier version, see what happens? Do you think the same even though it's a AR5004X instead of a AR5001x?

Thanks for the help.

[sjthinkpader]

This card may need the a/b/g II card driver. Read the txt files attached to each driver to make sure.

[rush242]

And of course, luckily, not one of the drivers I've found mentions anything at all about the card in the .txt files. If they even have a txt file.

Do you have a link to that driver you mentioned? Lenovo seems to skip it entirely. And the one I found comes from dslreports.

Hmmmm. Midnight here, back at it tomorrow. Thanks SJ.

[sjthinkpader]

I am actually in Japan today, so this is just after dinner.

Here is the link to the Thinkpad a/b/g II driver:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-52527

Almost every driver has a txt file. I always download this file along with the driver file.

[rush242]

Hmmmm, now you've thrown me.

The driver you linked to (which I did find) is not Atheros ver330156, it's 5.3.0.85 dated Nov of 2007. Am I missing something here?

I got the text file business, I thought you meant a txt that was contained within the driver package.

Let's see what happens with 5.3.0.85...

Thanks again. Enjoy Japan, I get to go to Tokyo for ONE DAY in April. One [censored] day. Not much time to see enough. D'oh!!

[rush242]

OK, that seems to work, at least here at home it does.

So we'll see what happens here at school.

Although the computer now does the little black and white progress bar across the screen every time it boots now.

That ain't reassuring...

[sjthinkpader]

Looks like you got this worked out.

...

The driver you linked to (which I did find) is not Atheros ver330156, it's 5.3.0.85 dated Nov of 2007. Am I missing something here?

...

At first I thought you are using a generic Atheros AR5001x. In this case, ver330156 driver should be the place to start.

After you indicated you are using an IBM version AR5004, then the a/b/g II driver would be the correct driver.

[rush242]

Thanks again for your help. The progress bar while booting is now a standard fixture, but it doesn't seem to affect anything, and all is well.

Thanks again!