[artie86]

hi there, i hope someone can help me out!

I've got an acer aspire 3690 running vista home basic (I know, I know, Vista is awful and should be discarded at once ...) and i'm having problems with the wireless card.

I've reinstalled the drivers for the broadcom wireless devices and in the device manager, it shows the card as installed and working correctly.

The problem i am having is that when i try to switch the wireless capablity on via the switch on the front of the laptop, a little green message pops up saying "No Wireless Device" so the card doesn't seem to be linked to the switch. I have reinstalled the acer launch manager which controls the all the buttons/toggles on the laptop but still to no avail.

Is there anything obvious I have missed?

Thanks in advance guys

Artie

[JohnWill]

Hold the Windows key and press R, then type devmgmt.msc

Under Network adapters, please tell me all the devices listed. Also, are there any devices anywhere in the Device Manager display with yellow ? or ! displayed?



I'd like to see this as well.

Hold the Windows key and press R, then type CMD to open a command prompt:

Type the following command:

IPCONFIG /ALL

Right click in the command window and choose Select All, then hit Enter.
Paste the results in a message here.

If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.

[TerryNet]

Is the installed wireless driver the latest from Acer's web site?

[artie86]

ok, got an update!

I eventually got round to installing XP on my laptop as i know my way around it much better than i do vista.

Still got a similar problem. The wireless card (broadcom) is showing in device manager as fully working, and the little broadcom diagnostic tool runs, and shows everything to be working properly. All the respective drivers have been downloaded from the Acer website, including the launch manager. When i try to switch the device on via the button on the front, all i get is a little green message at the bottom of the screen saying "no wireless device."

so it seems the card is working but it is not linked to the button on the front, at least thats my theory.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks for the help in advance!

Artie

[TerryNet]

You've answered my question, but let's try John's post #2 now. Even though you switched OSes it still applies.

[artie86]

hokey dokey...

Yes there are a few items in device manager with yellow question marks on them, one of which is a "PCI DEVICE" and under network adapters, the only one listed is the broadcom wireless device, and that is shown as functioning properly.

From the IP CONFIG command i get the following:

Windows ip configuration

Host name ... : artie-5eba07c8a
Primary DNS suffix ... :
Node Type ... : Broadcast
IP Routing Enabled ... : No
WINS Proxy Enabled ... :No

Ethernet Adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Media State ... : Media Disconnected
Description ... : Broadcom 802.11g Network Adapter
Physical Address ... : 00-19-7E-A3-81-55

Any use?

[Couriant]

Perhaps it's not seeing your wireless router, or whatever device its connected to. Do you have a wireless router? and if so, is it set to deny PCs except for MAC, or is the wireless connection on the router even enabled?

[artie86]

yep the router is fully up and running, there are 2 other devices connected to it wirelessly without a problem. Thanks for the suggestion though!

[Couriant]

and you do not have any access lists or rules to allow/deny pcs connecting wirelessly?

[artie86]

nope, the router is constantly dishing out a signal, just a WEP key that prevents anything connecting wirelessly. The laptop does connect through a USB wireless dongle, but just the internal one i'm having problems with

[Couriant]

hmm I do recall if you have windows and a 3rd party program that usually is supplied for the connection can cause issues.

Can you go into View Wireless Networks?

[artie86]

yes i can, and i know that 3rd party connection managers/programs can cause problems, so i always disable them and use the Windows connection manager

[TerryNet]

Get all your chipset and other drivers from Acer's web site. If they give no explicit directions about installing them, install the chipset drivers first, and then the others.

[artie86]

ok done, still to no avail. Really struggling with this one guys, anyone got any ideas?

[TerryNet]

Still get Media Disconnected with ipconfig /all? If you try to 'view available networks' do you get a message or an indication that there is no wireless device (similar to the message you get when trying to switch it on)?