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My laptop is an Acer Aspire V5-573G, dual-booting Windows 8.1 (64-bit) / Linux Mint 16 (Xfce, 64-bit).
Currently it has a strange WiFi issue. On the Windows side, the wireless card is almost completely unusable as it only connects to my mobile hotspot and is unable to connect to any other wireless router except the University's WiFi.
A Can't connect to this network
error comes up no matter what WiFi network it tries to connect to and irrespective of how many attempts. I also checked the event viewer and it will return mainly two reasons: one is The specific network is not available
, and the one another is The driver disconnected while associating
.
After some amount of trial-and-error, including re-installing the driver quite a few times (which didn't work), I ended up trying to connect the computer using Ethernet. This works and it also gets the WiFi to work. However, the speed is capped at about 64kbit/s and almost always stops functioning shortly afterwards. In addition, when the adapter is disabled, it won't connect again.
From the Linux side, it works without any problem. This makes me highly doubt that the adapter is damaged (I dropped my laptop bag once while the laptop was sleeping), but if it is, it shouldn't work in Linux, with my mobile hotspot or the University's WiFi either.
So, what I have in mind as the possible causes:
- Some configuration file in Windows regarding wireless network is messed up. (Most likely, but I don't know how to fix it without reinstalling Windows, which means all my programs will be wiped clean.)
- The adapter is indeed damaged. (But this does not explain why it works for some networks as stated earlier.)
Could someone enlighten me over this mystery?
Update: I've now tried re-installing Windows, but it's still not working. I guess the Wi-Fi card really is busted?
Have you tried removing and re-installing the driver? – Alex McKenzie – 2014-02-04T15:58:19.177
I tried re-installing the driver quite a few times, but it is still not working. – Truthseeker Rangwan – 2014-02-04T16:01:54.307
Update: I've tried re-install the windows and it is still not working. I guess the WI-FI card is really busted. – Truthseeker Rangwan – 2014-02-05T10:15:19.227