Toshiba Satellite Pro A200 fn+f8 not functioning

Hey guys and gals,

Not sure if this is the right thread for this so apologies if not.

The problem is with a Toshiba Satellite Pro A200 laptop running Windows XP Pro SP3.

I was asked to a classroom to fix another problem on this and another laptop, when I logged the user off this machine I suddenly wasn't able to log in to the domain over the wireless.
So I took it to my desk and plugged an Ethernet cable in and it worked fine, logged onto the domain, but as soon as I unplugged the cable it of course wouldn't connect wirelessly.

Toggling fn+f8 does absolutely nothing even though I know for sure that this key disables/enables wireless because I tried it on other laptops of the same model. The wireless switch on the front of the laptop is also switched on and toggling this does nothing.

Having trawled through Google I can't find anything slightly useful, just people recommending toggle those switches.

Also I tried system restoring to Sept 2012 but the problem persists.

Within Toshiba's software on the laptop there is nothing to suggest that the laptop even has a wireless card. Device Manager shows only a FireWire adapter and Ethernet adapter under Network adapters...but when I choose to show hidden devices there are 2 Atheros Wireless Network adapters showing, neither of which have an error symbol:

Atheros AR5006X Wireless Network Adapter - Packet Scheduler Miniport
Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter - Packet Scheduler Miniport

I've tried to provide as much information as possible but may have missed something out :) thanks for any help.

Regards,
Jack

The A200 should have or is capable of having a wireless card. Have you tried flashing the BIOS?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JackCPickup

Within Toshiba's software on the laptop there is nothing to suggest that the laptop even has a wireless card. Device Manager shows only a FireWire adapter and Ethernet adapter under Network adapters...but when I choose to show hidden devices there are 2 Atheros Wireless Network adapters showing, neither of which have an error symbol:

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The wireless adapters are broken [or missing].

If a device is showing as hidden, with no errors, it means it's not physically there.

It was fine on the wireless 30 seconds before trying to log in as admin.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JackCPickup

It was fine on the wireless 30 seconds before trying to log in as admin.

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Does it have to do some sort of setup?

I've had issues with "requires an administrator to install this" popping up with graphics cards, despite the fact it works fine. If the user closes it, it usually defaults to "don't remind me about this".


Have you tried deleting and readding the drivers?

We had some of these (now taken them out of main school use).

I can't remember if it's a seperate wireless card on these or not, if it is, try removing and re-seating the wireless card.

Pleasant surprise, after the 7th restart it decided it did have a wireless card after all so then it was just a matter of resetting TCP/IP and Winsock and all was well again :)

Thanks for the help guys.

Regards,
Jack