Hi everyone,
First time I have posted. I am trying to fix a friend's laptop, an emachines model 442, which was running Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium x64. It was refusing to load Windows when I got to look at it. They had no recovery disk so I downloaded one but system recovery would not deal with the issue. Finally I installed Windows again from the recovery disk, knowing that it meant buying a new Product Key. Windows installed fine however I had some problems after installing new drivers. Eventually it worked OK but it could not find the wireless adapter. I knew the machine had one (an Atheros AR5B97) but it was not present in Device Manager, only the ethernet card. I downloaded the latest driver but nothing. Finally turned off the machine and the next day the wireless light lit up on start up and it installed the adapter. This was good for a couple of hours then it disappeared again. Troubleshooting just confirmed the presence of the ethernet card - no wireless adapter. A few minutes later I started the machine up in Safe Mode to run an anti-virus (in case there was something left over from the old installation. No problems were found however on restarting in normal mode the graphics card had apparently also disappeared and I had to reinstall it. Don't know if this will spark anyone's interest but I would love to know what is going on.
Any response much appreciated.
First time I have posted. I am trying to fix a friend's laptop, an emachines model 442, which was running Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium x64. It was refusing to load Windows when I got to look at it. They had no recovery disk so I downloaded one but system recovery would not deal with the issue. Finally I installed Windows again from the recovery disk, knowing that it meant buying a new Product Key. Windows installed fine however I had some problems after installing new drivers. Eventually it worked OK but it could not find the wireless adapter. I knew the machine had one (an Atheros AR5B97) but it was not present in Device Manager, only the ethernet card. I downloaded the latest driver but nothing. Finally turned off the machine and the next day the wireless light lit up on start up and it installed the adapter. This was good for a couple of hours then it disappeared again. Troubleshooting just confirmed the presence of the ethernet card - no wireless adapter. A few minutes later I started the machine up in Safe Mode to run an anti-virus (in case there was something left over from the old installation. No problems were found however on restarting in normal mode the graphics card had apparently also disappeared and I had to reinstall it. Don't know if this will spark anyone's interest but I would love to know what is going on.
Any response much appreciated.