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

I had the same problem. Every 10-120sec network fails!

I tried to uninstall Powergear, tried all kind of drivers and energy saving politics.

Nothing work for me

P.S. My laptop is Asus N550JK

Hey Guys,

it´s simply. The drivers for atheros ar9485wb-eg on windows 8.1 are very bad.

I have 2 other notebooks, 4 smartphones and 3 tablets in my house.

Not one of the devices have problems with the wireless connection.

Only my brand new Lenovo G710 with the atheros ar9485wb-eg wlan device.

So wait and hope that in future will be better drivers avaliable.

Sorry, but that´s reality.

Greetings from Germany

Hi, I agree with you 100%! :-)

I arrived at this discussion thread after browsing through various Microsoft community threads. My persistent problem is that my laptop (an ASUS G551JM gaming notebook on Windows 8.1 64-bit from the factory) always fails to reconnect after waking up from hibernation and occasionally, sleep mode.

When I bought this notebook in October 2014, it had absolutely no problems with WiFi connectivity at home. I have been using the same TP Link A/P router for a year (settings have never been changed) and after undergoing a few Microsoft updates, I noticed my G551JM unable to reconnect to the same SSID at home upon waking up.

I eventually narrowed the problem down to this particular laptop as it's the only one in the household that uses the Qualcomm Atheros AR9485WB-EG wireless network card. It came to a point that I have to reset the TP-Link A/P router every time in order for my Asus G551JM to latch onto the wireless network and that became totally unacceptable after a while. By doing so, I'll be temporarily disrupting the WiFi service for whoever is using it at home, including the Internet TV that my ISP provides.

Other wireless devices at home that have absolutely NO problems connecting to the home WiFi at all:

1. All Android smartphones and iPads: three Sony Xperia phones, one Nexus 7 2013 tablet, one Samsung Galaxy S3, one Samsung Note 2, two iPhone 4 & 6 and an el cheapo Taiwan brand, Leadoo smartphone. Basically, if it's a smartphone or tablet, there's no problem whatsoever connecting to the home network.
2. My father's Lenovo S410p 14" laptop on Windows 8.1. He would have complained to me a long time ago if his notebook had WiFi connectivity problems. Since he never did, I knew that his Lenovo notebook had no issues.
3. My four year old, Sony Bravia CX52 flat screen TV, which has a USB WiFi dongle for connecting to the Internet.
4. My old Asus UL80-VT laptop from 2010 with an Intel Centrino chipset, running Win 7 64-bit.
5. My old Acer Aspire 1825PTZ convertible (Win 7 64-bit), from 2010 with either an Intel Wireless-N 1000 or an Atheros AR9281 wireless card (can't remember offhand).
6. My third Asus laptop bought after this G551JM - a Zenbook UX-303 model (with a WiFi different network card). This one comes with Windows 8.1 pre-installed, like my Asus G551JM. I can put the Asus Zenbook into hibernation for two or three weeks and it will reconnect to the home network upon waking up, without fail.

After doing my process of elimination, I realized that this WiFi problem affects only this particular laptop - and it so happens that it uses the Qualcomm Atheros AR9485WB-EG WiFi adapter. It's not Asus at fault, since both my Zenbook and my old UL80-VT have no problems re-connecting to the network after hibernation. It's not Windows 8.1 either, as neither my Zenbook UX-303 nor my father's Lenovo S410p suffered from WiFi sleep issues.

Solutions which I have tried so far without any success:

• Changing the WiFi channel on my A/P router.
• Enabling Flight mode, disabling it and turning the WiFi on and off.
• Rebooting the computer multiple times.
• Attempting to switch from WPA2 to WEP/WPA (the TP-Link router didn't allow me to downgrade to WEP, although I could turn off WiFi security altogether, which I didn't want to).
• Changing from pure Wireless N to B/G/N at the router's end.
• Flushing the DNS cache
• Using some fancy network adapter resetting command via Windows Powershell.
• Disabling the "Allow this computer to turn off this device to save power" under Power Management.
• Pressing "F5" to refresh the networks detected.
• Attempting to disable/uninstall the Microsoft Miniport virtual network adapter (not found on my Windows 8.1 installation, so this doesn't apply to me)
• Uninstalling Asus PowerGear power management bloatware, but my laptop was not pre-installed with PowerGear in the first place. My old Asus UL80-VT however, had PowerGear is installed. Therefore it couldn't be PowerGear at fault, by my deduction.
• Refreshing my Windows 8.1 installation, as the last resort.

The last straw was when my laptop fails to "remember" the WPA2 password and refuses to connect to the home WiFi - except whenever I turn the TP-Link router on and off again. While that will definitely fix the G551JM's connection issues, why does Windows always recommend resetting the router all the time when I run the troubleshooting facility?

Therefore I came to the conclusion that it's not my TP-Link router at fault. Or Windows 8.1 itself when I first purchased this laptop - because everything worked fine until a month or two ago. So it had to be the wireless network adapter, which was unique to this particular laptop.

Things I know that I have never done to my Asus G551JM:

• Modifying/tinkering with the wireless network card's properties, changing MTU values, etc.
• Installing any kind of third party software that claims to improve WiFi connectivity.
• Play any online games (yes, I know) but gaming laptops are the best desktop PC replacement notebooks when you factor in reliable and efficient heat dissipation.

That said, I use the G551JM solely for Adobe Lightroom to post process RAW image files and general surfing/email. I finally got tired of being chained to desktop PC but needed a laptop that is more powerful than my 5 year old, Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 desktop running Windows 7 HP 64-bit.

What I do know that's happened to my Asus G551JM since I bought it last year

• Periodic Windows updates in which one of them may have messed up the WiFi connectivity. I do not know which particular update was responsible for screwing up my laptop's wireless performance/reliability but apparently one of the updates did.

How I solved this WiFi connectivity problems upon waking up from hibernation

1. I followed the suggestion from one of the kind members (thanks JeroenGoddijn!) who posted earlier and downloaded and installed the latest 10.0.0.308 driver dated December 2014 from the Atheros driver repository. My previous driver was dated March 2014 and Microsoft Windows Update reported that it was "up to date". So did IObit's Driver Booster software which I happen to have installed.
2. I merely unpacked the ZIP file into a folder and manually selected the driver for the Atheros AR9485WB-EG from the folder. As the driver was updated, my WiFi connection temporarily disconnected and then voila! It resumed re-connecting to my home WiFi quickly. I did not have to uninstall the previous Atheros drivers at all. The driver update process simply overwrite the older driver code. Did not have to reboot my laptop either.

I'm very happy to report that with a simple driver update, my WiFi sleep/hibernation issues with my Asus G551JM are now over. No need to physically open up my laptop, looking for crossed WiFi antenna wires! :-)

That said, I don't think the fault lies with Windows or the Qualcomm Atheros wireless adapter alone - but the poor combination of Windows 8.1 and the Atheros WiFi drivers, just like you had suggested!

Sorry for the overlong post, but I wanted to make things clear that I have tried every trick in the book - except looking for the right driver update.  I wasn't aware that one of the previous Windows Updates somehow had messed up my laptop's original drivers.

Hope this post will be useful to others in the same boat as I was! :-)

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.

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.