I think my Atheros Card is Fried (How to Diganose?)

[cb474]

I have a ThinkPad T60, with the Atheros AR5212 card. Today my wireless stopped working after I did nothing other than power off the computer and power it on again when I got home.

Normally I run Debian Linux (but I'm dual booting with XP) and I was getting a "device not found" error at startup that I'd never seen before. I figured it was a driver issue, reinstalled some things, but no dice. So then I booted up into Windows and also found that there was no wireless connection. When I hit Fn+F5, the option for powering on the wireless card has completely disappeared from that window, I only see the bluetooth card. The switch on the front of the computer for switching wireless radios on and off does appear to be functioning normally. I tried upgrading the BIOS, to see if that would help, since it seemed like the only thing that could effect both Debian and XP. But I still got the same results. The ethernet card is working fine.

Does this mean the Atheros card just fried for some reason? How can I diagnose this?

Thanks.

[Harryc]

I would try to run PC-Doctor from a bootable CD. If PC-Doctor does not see the card, then I would reseat the card itself. If that does not help, replace the card.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 56222.html
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 63896.html

[cb474]

Thanks for the suggestion. Of course, in order for this problem to be as annoying as possible, the next time I started the computer the wireless card was working again. I ran PC Doctor anyway and the wireless card passed the test PC Doctor has. And I took the card and and put it back in to reseat it, although it looked like it was settled in there fine to begin with. So I guess now I'm stuck either replacing the card anyway, under the assumption that it is the card failing, or just waiting to see if it fails again (no doubt at the most inopportune of moments).

Has anyone every experienced anything like this before? A wireless card seeming to fail and then come back? Is that typical of how they would fail? Can they overheat and shut themselves down or anything like that? Or could it just be something utterly random like a cosmic ray passing through it and moving an electron, only to have it all restabalize and return to normal latter?

[Harryc]

T60 Atheros cards are not that expensive. I'd keep a spare.