Wireless turns on and off Cq50-215nr

[Golfnut]

Hi all,

Specs- Compaq laptop CQ50-215NR

WiFi adapter- Atheos Ar5007 802.11b/g

 Windows Vista Home Premium

Problem- Wireless turns on and off every few seconds. HP Wireless assistant keeps changing from wireless disabled to wireless on. Wireless button keeps changing from blue to orange.

When I go to device manager and check properties of wirless network card it says "Device is working properly"  Pressing the button while it is orange does not turn on the wireless but the wireless assistant box comes up and says wireless disabled so I know the button is doing something.

If I go to Windows mobility center I can turn off wireless from there but trying to turn it on just starts the on off process again. Staying in the mobility center and my timing is just right, I can hold down the wireless button and click on turn on wireless button in mobility center and sometimes the wireless will come on and stay on for a while. It seems to shut off after a certain period of time.

I spoke with support and they had me do some things. Something with the bios (I don't remember.) Then they had me uninstall and reinstall the driver. Lastly remove the network card and reinstall it. ( Careful when removing network card. Little screws are hard to grab and one fell through a hole into laptop but luckily I was able to coax it out.

Support decided I need a new wireless card and is sending me one. Thankfully I'm still under warranty.

I don't have much confidence in it being a bad wireless card but you never know.

Any one had same problem? Any thoughts?

Sorry for this being long but I wanted to be as thorough as possible.

Ray

[Golfnut]

Hello again,

I don't think my problem is solved. However my wireless started working again sporadically. Sometimes the wireless light goes back and forth between amber and blue. It seems that if I go into Mobility Center and while holding my finger on the wireless button and clicking "turn on wireless" in mobility center eventually after several tries it connects. I don't think this problem is related to one particular wireless card as I see by reading other threads everyone seems to have a different laptop or card eg. 5007,5009

One other note, If the wireless assistant says "wireless disabled" and I go into the mobility center, the box that says "turn wireless on" is grayed out. Only by holding my finger on the wireless button will it change back a clickable button. When things are working right the box is always clickable from within mobility center.

I was waiting for HP to send me a new wireless card but it wasn't in stock so when my wireless started working for a day or two I canceled the new card.

I put this information in to shed some new light as to what could be the problem because it would seem to me that if I can force it to work someone from HP may put 2 and 2 together and recognize the symptoms.

Regards

Ray

[matthewvwalters]

Hmm, mine just started doing similar, turning off and on by itself.  The time varies but it can be as little as 15 seconds back and forth, back and forth to minutes or hours. 

I went into administrative tools and was looking through the Event Viewer to see if there was anything triggering the disable, like a program failing or another program disabling wireless.  I didn't find much.  About the closest thing was Windows Audit Failure where Windows Firewall was blocking incomming connections on the network.  It seemed to happen sometimes around when WLAN would disable itself but not every time.  No specific events really seemed to correlate with the disabling.

I opened the Task Manager to see if I could catch a process running when it would disable, maybe pointing me to a possible culpret, but again, nothing useful popped up.

I've heard some horror stories about MANY wireless cards failing in HP laptops.  This is a big of a blanket statement as failures are really brand/model card specific or thermal.  Mine has an Intel 5100 card, and being Intel and not some noname whatever, I'm less inclined to believe it's hardware failure but rather some software issue.  However, odd behaviors like this really do heavily point towards hardware failure more then anything else, especially the repeated, automatic on, off, on, off,...  Software is more off permanently and I get to restart Windows or reinstall drivers.  Things going by themselves in an irratic manner screams hardware problem, even if it's an Intel card.

 I've played around with manual disabling/enabling the wireless and even rebooted to make sure it just wasn't some Windows Vista fluke.  Nothing has helped so far.

Before I get some general, helpful advice, I'm far from new to computers, and have been around them for 15 years, grew up on DOS and Windows 3.1 and worked my way through 95, 98, XP, and now Vista not to mention building my own PCs and troubleshooting and repairing friends, family, and coworker's computers.  I'm very familiar with the basics, but this stumps me.  Other then hardware failure, nothing on the software side really points towards specific issues.

I still need to run down the basics like uninstalling/reinstalling drivers and physically uninstalling/reinstalling the nework card to make sure it's not just some weird fluke with the software or a connection problem.  With some searching on Google, it seems I'm not the only one with this problem, and some comments with Bios, software reinstall and fiddling with the hardware doesn't seem to fix it, so I don't exactly have high hopes doing these basic steps.

I'm really just here to see if anybody has a specific solution to this that might involve something other then getting a new network card.

Made a small vid of my laptop being confused.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf_JnXwNXSI

Message Edited by matthewvwalters on 02-27-2009 06:35 PM

Message Edited by matthewvwalters on 02-27-2009 06:36 PM

[printerfixerguy]

Hi there, we have the CQ50-142US and my wife started have trouble with the wireless button similar to what you guys are describing. Usually the wireless button turns blue right about when the computer is logging in and is connected once it reaches the desktop and is ready to go. Today it started mis-behaving and would not stay blue. If you pressed it, it would stay amber. If you pressed and held it for about 3 seconds it would turn blue, but only for 1 second and then turned amber again.

You might answer your question of whether or not the wireless card is working if you press and hold the button. Just keep pressing it, if it turns blue, keep holding it, open your browser and go somewhere to verify connection. It will probably work and it would be safe to say then that the wireless card is working.

Of course as soon as you let go, it will turn amber and you will lose your connection.

I poked around a bit and eventually ended up at the device manager, I opened up the network adpaters and opened up the wireless card properties. I went to the power management tab and unchecked the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power". I then pressed the wireles button and it turned blue and stayed blue. I then logged into this forum and typed this reply... I hope this helps in some way. Good luck.

[matthewvwalters]

I have no clue what the specific issue was.  I have yet to have it happen again since.  It was odd because I really did nothing to software or the laptop itself.  It did it a couple days and didn't change even after restarting the laptop.  Then it just sort of...fixed itself, lol.

I would initially look towards loose wiring.  There is probably a plug in for the interface bar that attaches to the motherboard.  The wireless card itself could also be loose.  I would look at all mechanical connections first. 

Second, I would look at software, just making sure the drivers are installed without problem and that you have the most recent drivers from HP's site.  I know there was newer drivers for mine then what was on there when I got it.

Besides that, I don't know.  You'd almost have to break out the multimeter and test wiring and the switch, test the wireless card with a spare, and try running an alternate copy of the operating system.  It gets more complex.

I'm just glad mine stopped by itself.  I'm not fond of sending my laptop away to HP being a college student.

[spikespiegel]

hey printerfixerguy!

i registered just to thank you for your solutuion, it totally works! Great job,

greetings from poland

[Papadave532]

Hi all,

I got to this thread because I was having trouble enabling the wireless card in a CQ-50 after doing some work "under the hood" of the laptop.

The Wifi button would only disable the card or enable it with the card turned off. HP Wireless Assistant utility refers you to the Windows Mobility Center to turn the card on. The "Turn Wireless On" button was greyed out. I checked BIOS configuration, Network Connection settings and the Device Manager but finally found the location in the Properties section of the HP Wireless Assistant (even though it refers you to the WMC).  Enable the card in HWA and it will automatically enable in WMC.

It just seems redundant to me that there is an option in HWA when Windows already has that function. Anyway, I hope this saves someone a headache!

Dave

[jtmunyan]

Thanks so much for submitting this fix. I have been  plagued by the intermittent failure of the HP Wireless Assistant. I did as you suggested and voila my problem went away. Thank you thank you thank you

[HP_T3CH]

Hi you can also try uninstalling hp wireless assistant...

sometimes hp wireless assistant creates problems for the windows mobility center..

just uninstall hp wireless assistant  from programs and reboot pc...

windows 7 and vista can manage your wireless card even without hp wireless assistant..

hope this helps...

[englishnerd692]

Hey the exact same thing is happening to my netbook. I was using it the other day and all of a sudden the wireless began turning on and off every 10 or so seconds. I am worried that this may be a virus? I tried printerfixguys solution and the light kept changing from blue to amber. Any solutions will be GREATLY appreciated. Otherwise I'm going to have to take this into the shop...