Qualcomm Atheros AR9485WB-EG - wireless adapter occasionally loses connection (Windows 8.1)

Hi,

Sorry I forgot to read, or I wasn't notified by the Microsoft Communuty regarding your reply to me until now.

In my case with the ASUS G551-JM laptop, I later discovered that I did NOT have to do anything beyond removing the old Atheros drivers and reinstalling them with the latest ones from Qualcomm's download site.  I'm not kidding! :-)

The earlier drivers provided by the ASUS support site were poorly written or mismatched with the built-in Atheros NIC, while the latest one from the official Atheros support site worked like a charm. The first attempt at updating the drivers only worked briefly until I decided a second attempt at reinstalling the drivers.

For the second attempt, I used IOBit's Advanced Uninstaller to mop up whatever remants of the old Atheros driver in the Windows registry and remembered to reboot the laptop.  I can't remember if I also refreshed Windows 8.1's system files before re-installing the December 2014 driver, maybe I did.

Anyway, the results were fantastic! No more having to reset my TP-Link WiFi router after the driver installation. My notebook latched on to the home network flawlessly each and every time. This is what I expect from f all Windows computers, regardless of whatever network interface card brand they have.

I did NOT have to spend anything on an external WiFi dongle or adapter because I strongly believe it defeats the purpose of having the WiFi's antenna and electronics built into the bezel of the laptop's LCD display.  I've owned four laptops in the past and never had to buy an external WiFi adapter - except in one case where I bought a TP-Link USB external WiFi adapter for hotel rooms where the WiFi signal is too weak for the internal NIC to receive. The external adapter unfortunately wasn't as sensitive as I expected, so I ended up using it for my home desktop PC.

Who would have thought by merely updating to the new drivers properly would have fixed the WiFi issue for good?

In any case, I'm now on Windows 10 but am not sure if the Atheros drivers are the same from the Win 8.1 version. However WiFi works perfectly every time like it did before the OS upgrade.

On an unrelated note, Win 10 has issues with putting the laptop to sleep and sometimes, waking up from hibernation (blank screen). Hopefully it's a case of teething problems unitl Microsoft fixes problems as rudimentary as this, or I'll just roll back to Win 8.1.

Sorry to hear that you had to buy the ASUS N13 adapter - in my case it wasn't necessary at all and updating your Atheros drivers could have solved your WiFi issues too.

cheers!

To all you guys buying stuff. My method has been working with no drops for almost a year now. But keep going out and spending your $$$

Your suggestion to replace the built-in WiFi NIC is a good one, but I'll have to check with the ASUS Service Center if my request to do so will invalidate my laptop's standing 2-year warranty. I know that they can replace this crappy Atheros NIC with another one on the spot, but whether I'll be getting another replacement card from Atheros or Intel is a totally different matter.

Just a small update: I managed to fix my WiFi problem and it is now working just fine.

What I did was that I went to a local tech store, bought the Asus N13 WiFi adapter, plugged it in and voila!

No more irritating lag spikes or lost connection - the new WiFi adapter works like a charm.

It is a bit sad that I had put endless hours in trying to get that crappy Atheros working while the solution was that easy... ;-)

Cheers!

Another G551jm owner here... I have checked everything and I have the brand new drivers v.10.0.0.314 installed. Still, when the laptop is just few meters away from the WiFi router, the ping is very bad and the connection hangs up time after time. Other WiFi devices work just fine in my house.  G551jm's WiFi seems to work better when the laptop is in the same room with the router though, but this performance is totally unacceptable.

After some googling about the problems with AR9485WB-EG it seems there is lot of complains about this card and there are suggestions that the real reason is just the bad quality of the product itself. I'm currently looking for a new WiFi card to replace this sad piece of (low)tech, and luckily it seems there are some good options from Intel. Also, with G551jm, the card is visible right behind the service panel so replacing it shouldn't be too difficult.

Hi, thanks for chiming in!

Since my post in this forum, my Asus G551JM had the same problems twice (reconnecting to the home WiFi A/P after hibernation) again, but not as frequently before I updated the Qualcomm drivers.

I'm typing this a few meters away from the TP-LINK WiFi router (as I usually do at home) therefore range is not the issue here. I don't get connection drops in use but only being unable to re-connect after the laptop has gone into hibernation.

The G551JM's WiFi refused to reconnect an hour ago and this time I wanted to try solving it without rebooting the A/P router. So I decided to rollback the driver to the previous one - no dice. Then I re-installed the 10.0.0.308 drivers that's still on the hard drive and as if by magic, the laptop instantly connected to my home network!

The only other WiFi hotspot other than my home's which I've tried was at my friend's home; he had a cheap D-Link A/P router which the ISP provided and it was configured for Wireless B/G (not N though). I crashed at his place for the night and my G551JM had no problems reconnecting to his home network the next morning.

I have no idea why by merely rolling back the Atheros drivers and reinstalling them fixed my laptop's connectivity (without rebooting the TP-Link A/P router). If I were in a cafe or a restaurant with a free WiFi, I'm not going to ask the restaurant manager to reboot their router for my sake - especially if there are other users connected to the cafe's network at the same time.

Your suggestion to replace the built-in WiFi NIC is a good one, but I'll have to check with the ASUS Service Center if my request to do so will invalidate my laptop's standing 2-year warranty. I know that they can replace this crappy Atheros NIC with another one on the spot, but whether I'll be getting another replacement card from Atheros or Intel is a totally different matter.

It's too premature for me to single out whether:

a) my laptop so happened to be fitted with a bad Atheros AR9485WB-EG Wi-Fi card (manufacturing fault/poor quality control) or;

b) ALL Atheros AR9485WB-EG cards are crappy in the first place (hardware design problem) or;

c) The Win 8.1 drivers from Atheros were poorly written and tested (programming fault).

That said, Asus is still an excellent laptop manufacturer and I stand by their reputation. Although they didn't manufacture the Qualcomm Atheros card, whoever within Asus decided to outsource the WiFi card to Qualcomm and didn't test the AR9485WB-EG properly should be partly held accountable.

The G551JM is not a cheap model by any means - it's a premium 15.6" gaming laptop and a simple component like the internal WiFi card should be the very least of its problems.