Atheros AR9B51 wireless card not working

I bought a recertified ASUS G72 from Newegg quite some time ago. From day one, the wireless card had issues. Rather then sending the laptop back for warranty work like a smart person normally would, I opted to just roll with the punches and fiddle to get it to work every day... The issue was, I'd start up, and I'd have the dreaded yellow triangle at the bottom of the screen, saying limited or no connectivity, or sometimes just no wireless period. I'd flick the wireless on/off switch on the side on and off, push FN+F2(WIFI), and troubleshoot only to have the troubleshooter mindlessly tell me "turn on wireless capability" until WIFI would eventually turn on. Until one day... That no longer worked. Nothing worked. So I went and bought some 20 dollar piece of crap Digital Totem USB WIFI dongle. It works, but also has issues periodically. Today I got fed up with having to unplug, replug, re-setup the dongle and decided I was gonna get to the bottom of this onboard WIFI chip situation. I opened up the bottom, found the card and unplugged and plugged it back into the mini pci slot. Tried again. Still nothing. Went online, looked for new drivers. Found one on ATHEROS drivers for Microsoft Windows and tried updating, only to have it spit back at me "the best driver is already installed." BLA! Not only that but, Device Manager said it was an AR928X... So again i went online and google searched both "atheros ar928x not working" as well as the previous number AR9B51, only to come across a thread about ubuntu and performing some ridiculously confusing actions in the command prompt. I'm not using ubuntu though. Windows 7. I'm starting to wonder if I should get back online and buy a higher end dongle, or take 'er into the shop to have them crack this badboy open and get to the bottom of things. Any suggestions on what else I can try before I resort to that?

 

When trying to upgrade wireless software you should always completely remove all previous wireless software and drivers. Then attempt to load the other software. Also make sure the wireless switch is on during the uninstal and during the instillation.

 

i'd rather get THIS ONE fixed, than go buy another one. unless it's just plain fried...

 

The easiest way would be to cross-check this card in another notebook/netbook and the other way around.
It's possible that the card dies on you so you may end up spending hours reinstalling, looking for new drivers etc and still end up with nothing.

My first step would be to confirm it's actually working by putting it in another notebook.

 

good point...

 

upon trying that option, is there anywhere I could look to find instructions on how to disassemble my laptop? yesterday when i was looking at the card, i noticed a black and a white wire attached to the card. i took all the screws out of the bottom of the laptop to take the bottom half off so I could see where those wires lead to, to see if one had become loose. even with all the screws out, the laptop bottom would not come off - as if it was glued as well....

i just watched youtube video on how to disassemble. those black n white wires are just antenna wires which don't connect to anything, they just sit inside the screen housing....

 

Those black and white wires are your antennas, don't mess with them. Simply disconnect them from the adapter.

 

I had something similar on my daughter's mini 1012, that has an Atheros card. It would work very sporadically in XP, but worked every time in ubuntu.
After a year of her using a wired connection, I needed to buy a new router (the old $20 Trendnet blew up), so I went out and bought a more expensive $20 d-link and put DD-WRT on it.
I found that my other wireless stuff connected better, and low and behold, my daughter's Atheros card has connected consistently, in XP, after that.
So why it wouldn't connect with the Trendnet, I don't know, other than the fact that it didn't use an Atheros chip in it, but the d-link does?