Integrated Wireless does not work after BIOS Flash 1

[haemphyst]

I bought an Averatec laptop, and I am really happy with it, EXCEPT - I broke my own rule, and flashed the BIOS. I say "broke my own rule" because I never flash unless I am goig to gain something from it. This time I thought "What the heck..." (OH, and now I can't go back to the original BIOS, either - I get an error that says "The BIOS image you are using is older than the installed BIOS. Flashing will not continue.) The only thing this flash offered me was the fact that the wireless NIC is NOT enabled by default at boot-up. You have to press ALT+F3, after the OS os booted to use the wireless feature.

Anyway, after I flashed it, the integrated miniPCI wireless-G no longer connects to my WAP. It (and XP Pro, SP1a or SP2, Win98, W2K SP4, and Linux - RedHat, Fedora and SuSE) sees the network, but will not accept an IP from the switch (Windows gets it's standard 169.254.x.x) - and subsequently, no network access. I have formatted, installed MULTIPLE other OS's, and all of them behave the same way. I have even gone RIGHT to the manufacturer of the NIC (RaLink), and downloaded their driver set for the card (which worked BEAUTIFULLY before the flash, BTW). I bought a Linksys PCMCIA wireless NIC, and it will connect and browse just fine. I am about to buy another miniPCI wireless NIC, if I can find one, but I am afraid that the BIOS flash has donesomething to the accessibility of the miniPCI slot...

Any suggestions? And no, Averatec was really no help. It is still under warranty, but I need to have the thing available to me - that's why I bought it.

e-mail me at ddraper at igalaxy dot net

 

[bcastner]

faq779-4625

 

[haemphyst]

Thanks for that suggestion, but this, I think, is really a hardware issue, and that article really addresses software issues. There is no registry in Linux, and the NIC behaves EXACTLY the same in all operating systems I have installed. And yes, there were formats between every attempted install of each and every operating system tried. Also, with every fresh install of a MS OS, there would be a fresh registry...

e-mail me at ddraper at igalaxy dot net

 

[bcastner]

Then a driver issue.
You may have better luck identifying the underlying manufacturer of the wireless device than going through Averatec.

Intel, for example, has done three updates for its wireless PCI-Mini adapter in seven weeks.

 

[haemphyst]

I already did that. The manufacturer is RaLink. Tried all of their driver packages - and they are dedicated packages for EACH OS I have tried to install - from 98 on up.

There are no native drivers in any of these operating systems - I am forced to use either Averatec's set, or RaLink's set, which I have done...

e-mail me at ddraper at igalaxy dot net

 

[bcastner]

If no joy perusing:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ralink+wireless

Replace that with a wireless PCMCIA adapter or an mini-PCI from Intel or other known manufacturer.

There are horror stories about this adapter out there.