Wireless connection issues Asus G50Vt-X5

I bought a G50Vt-X5 from Best Buy last friday. Over the course of the weekend it repeatedly dropped the wireless connection. It still shows as connected in the tray but for some reason it will not connect to any webpages, and will drop my connection from Warhammer Online. I found a couple of reviews of this laptop mentioning the same thing, but without a fix listed.

I finally broke down and called Best Buy yesterday and they told me to bring it in. They hooked it up there and it dropped the connection off of their network after about 2 minutes. The guy there swapped my HD to a new machine and sent me on my way.

One of the surefire ways for it to drop the connection was to load Warhammer so that my character was online, and walk away for more than a couple of minutes. So when I got home with the new machine last night that's exactly what I did. It promptly dropped the connection, but there was server maintenance going on, so I hoped it was something on their end. A little later I was Alt+tab'ing back and forth between google messenger and Warhammer trying to get some advice from a friend on what to do, and at one point was in the chat window with him for several minutes, my Warhammer connection dropped again, but the internet kept working, which it wouldn't have before.

I left it for quite some time (without Warhammer loaded) and read a book for a while and jumped back on and my connection was ok, so I really hoped that it was just server issues from Warhammer from last night. I put it into sleep mode before I went to bed, got up this morning and turned it on, after it booted I got into google and into my gmail account but then it dropped the connection as I was typing a reply email, and I had to manually dis- and reconnect in order for it to work again.

One of the things my friend told me to do was to try to ping 4.2.2.2 and my router's IP when my connection was out. I successfully pinged both addresses, which, according to him, means that my wireless card is dropping the DNS from my router. I'm not the most computer savvy person in the world so I'm not entirely sure what that means or what to do about it. I know it's not the router itself because the issue was duplicated at Best Buy.

By the way, I'm using a Linksys WRT54G router. I have the wireless mode on the laptop set at 802.11B/G. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, I'm on the verge of just taking this back for a refund.

 

Which wireless adapter is in this--it has two options. Because you said its set to b/g, I almost think you have a wireless N card but you are trying to rule out possible issues?

First step, try the wireless adapter driver straight from Intel rather than the Asus ones, which are likely several months out of date.

For example, for the wireless N card from intel

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2753

 

It is the N card. It's also up to date from intel's webpage, I downloaded the driver just this afternoon.

I got a windows update this afternoon and I haven't lost connection since, crossing my fingers right now.

Thanks for posting, really appreciate the help.

 

I am currently still having issues, i downloaded the latest drivers from asus for the wireless card and i am downloading all the windows updates now. I hope i can resolve this because this notebook is pretty awesome.

 

get the drivers from intel...asus are out of date (likely)

 

I had the drivers from Intel and it still did it, but when I got home this afternoon I got a windows update, rebooted afterwards ant haven't lost my connection since. I've tested it with shutdown, restart, sleep, and loaded Warhammer and left it idling for 15 minutes with no problems. I hesitate to say that whatever the update I got was fixed the problem, but it's kinda startin to look like it.

 

The only thing I can think is somehow having the new driver from the intel page somehow triggered a windows update that I either didn't have or hadn't installed for whatever reason.

 

I updated my windows and right now i am going on 1 1/2 hours so far with no issues.

 

Yes, I know...I was referring to Strikah

I looked at the uploads that came down today and neither would lead me to believe they fixed your issue..two security updates. Of course, MS is never very complete in their update descriptions.

Maybe it was the update, or maybe a combination of the two? That's why I was telling Strikah to grab the intel driver updates, too

 

Still having issues.

 

I never lost my connection last night. It maintained it this morning when I brought the computer out of sleep mode as well.

Strikah have you gotten the WiFi drivers from the Intel page rather than the Asus page? I've been told the Asus page isn't the most reliable for making sure you have the right drivers.

 

I dowloaded those last night, played WAR for about 2 hours straight with no problems. I will test it out some more today and see how it goes.
thanks

 

Warhammer was the most surefire way for me to lose my connection, if I left my character idling for even 2-3 minutes it would drop. I left him standing for 15+ minutes several times last night and never dropped it. Before I went to work today I put the computer in sleep mode because that was the other way to make it drop, when you brought it out of sleep mode. Just came home from work on lunch about 6 hours later and it held the connection fine.

I hope your issue resolves as well, I can definitely sympathize with the frustration.

 

When yours dropped did it come right back, or did you have to do stuff to get the connection back? Right now mine is much better, but it did drop once for about 30 seconds and came right back on by itself.

 

I had to either manually dis/reconnect, or restart the computer, it wasn't reloading by itself.

I did drop once (briefly, and reconnected by itself) this morning when I was checking my email before work, but I think that's more Comcast's ISP service, my modem randomly resets from time to time.

 

K, thats what i had to do before, but this last time it just went out and came back. I am hoping that it was just the ISP or modem dropping and not the laptop.
Thanks for all the feedback and help so far.

 

No problem, like I said, I can definitely sympathize with the frustration. I was about 24 hours from just taking it back for a refund.

 

Now i am getting random drops for about 15-30seconds, but it comes right back. This happened 4 times so far today.

 

From what I am reading around, it seems people here are experiencing the same issue as me. I recently bought this laptop, love it except for this issue. Only problem is, I am seeing my wireless network (wpa2) and it will not even connect to it, giving me limited or no connectivity.

So being a computer tech, and not finding any information on the fix for this issue... (Aside from the random drops for the people who can get it to connect, fix the power settings in the hardware profiles) I decided to check it out with an operating system other than Windows Vista Home Premium, here are my results.

Windows Vista Home Premium: Does not work, no fix.
Windows Vista Ultimate: Does not work, no fix.
Asus Pre-installed Linux thing: Works fine
Ubuntu: Works fine
Slackware: Works fine
Windows XP: Installing now to test


So overall, it seems that there's nothing wrong with the network card. It seems to be a Windows issue, most likely just a Windows Vista issue (would you really be surprised seeing how bad Vista is with compatibility?)

I have also come to conclude the following methods in vista did not work for me:

1) Downloading new driver from Asus website
2) Downloading new driver from Intels website
3) Service Pack 1 installation on Vista Ultimate
4) Completely updating Vista Ultimate

Also, another issue I've been having when it comes to networking on this machine... is one that really boggles my mind. It seems like I can only get wired network to work properly only when the wireless network is disabled. I'm talking in the hardware profiles. Just turning the switch off doesn't seem to be effective at all.

So, all-in-all, two Asus G50Vt-X5's and both so far have the exact same problem. My guess is some minor change in the Centrino 2 chip that they caught that gave vista compatibility issues. I am now going to install Windows XP and see what goes on and see if I can get it working in Windows XP, to conclude it's a Vista issue. Will post again shortly.

So two different XP CD's and a thumb stick XP installer later, blue screens on copying installation files on XP Corp SP2, so that's something to tinker with later. So XP can not be tested at this time from me until I figure out what the issue is, perhaps an xp sp3 cd will work better.

However what I did find out through farther reading, it's not only the Asus G50vt-x5 with this issue, it's practically everything with the Intel WiFi Link 5100 chipset. So I guess the Asus machines are not alone.

Source: http://support.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/CS-006205.htm

Also I read something about a windows update for windows vista that dell has provided, still trying to figure out what it is:

So, I will continue to research and see what I can find. I hope this post helps some people.

 

Okay, well last post aside, I figured it out. I am assuming people use the Asus Driver CD installer to install all the drivers automatically, that get this problem. It's not bad drivers or vista, it's bad configuration. If you install the driver off the CD manually, by going to the folder and clicking the "Intel PROSet Wireless.exe" in the directory:

Do a custom install and add everything to the installation like the WMI.
Wait for it to install. Then go to start and in the search type, "devmgmt.msc" and find the "Intell WiFi Link 5100 AGN" And right click it, go to properties.

Click on the Power Management tab and uncheck the box that says, "Allow this computer to turn off this device to save power" click apply, now if you idle or walk away for a couple minutes the internet will stay connected. These are the two most common problems that I've found. So, this should fix all your problems. Any questions send me a PM!

 

Would anyone have a suggestion on what to do as I recently purchased one of these notebooks but the wireless is still disconnecting me periodically now.

First got it, it had the issue so I used windows update and those drivers were still disconnecting. Then I tried to get the latest drivers from the intel website for which were only updated a few days ago, the problem is better with those ones but still disconnects every so often which is frustrating.

The one thing I find is that I can't make the changes Intel recommends to power polling as I don't have the options it describes in my advanced settings.

I do have proset/wireless connection utility installed, but its without the whole graphic interface and only has diagnostics and stats.

Is this a Vista64 restriction on the wireless utility, is there any way for me to adjust the power polling in Vista64?

Thanks

 

dude have you still having problems with the wifi conection?