Fix for HP Laptops

[Nigel Henry]

On Tuesday 31 March 2009 16:26, Karl Larsen wrote:
>     The problem with my HP CQ50 laptop is simple. When Vista (which has
> a driver) turns off it also turns off the atheros AR5007 WiFi hardware.
> This means my Linux without a driver can't turn on the hardware.
>
>     Here is how you fool HP and leave the WiFi turned ON!
>
> Step 1: Take your laptop to a place with no WiFi signals period. Then
> turn on Vista and when it is fully up the light next to the on-off swich
> will be red. This is the sign that there are no WiFi signals.
>
> Step 2. Set up windows so it is all ready to turn OFF. Put your arrow on
> the place to turn off Vista and with your other hand press the red
> button. It will change to green.
>
> Step3: Turn OFF Windows. When clear off take your finger off the
> red/green button. At this time the WiFi hardware is STILL TURNED ON!
>
> Step4. Go to where there is WiFi and try a Linux. It will come right up
> and work fine.
>
> Step5: Never start Vista again.
>
>     I plan to write this in my file "remember this".
>
>
> Karl

Hi Karl. Long time no speaks.

Are you saying that you drove out into the desert, until you lost all WiFi 
signals, then did the procedure as above? If it worked, it worked, and I'm 
not making fun of you here.

Laptops are a problem, because you cannot take the power off the mobo 
completely, unlike a PC, where you can just unplug it from the wall socket. I 
suppose you could remove the battery though.

I say the above because I have a TV card in one of my PC's, and watch TV on my 
Linux installs using xawtv. I also have XP available on this machine, and 
wanted to do the 3rd party security updates, and watch TV at the same time. 
No problem. Watched TV on XP while the security updates were downloading, 
then rebooted to one of  my Linux installs. Tried xawtv, and everyrhing is 
scrambled up, no visible video, and can't remember if there was sound.

Anyway. I'm a bit puzzled now, but from other problems I've seen, a good 
suggestion is to unplug the PC from the wall socket for a few minutes, which 
will remove all power from the mobo, apart from the cmos battery. I did that, 
and some minutes later plugged the PC back in. Fired up a Linux distro, ran 
xawtv, and TV played, as before I used TV on XP.

The only conclusion I can come to, is that when I watched TV on XP, changes 
were made to the EEprom on the TV card (Haupauge Win TV Express), and when 
rebooting to a Linux OS, these changes were still present, which is why xawtv 
on Linux was now not working. Unplugging the PC from the wall socket seemed 
to reset everything, and upon plugging the PC back in some minutes later, and 
booting up Linux, xawtv now worked ok.

Perhaps you have a similar problem here with your WiFi card, where when booted 
up into Vista, the WiFi card is setup by Vista, then when you reboot into 
Linux the old settings, which were set up by Vista, are still there, which is 
why the WiFi card won't work on Linux now.

At the risk of making you drive out into the desert again, and redo the 
procedure where you got the WiFi card working on Linux again, bootup Vista, 
and see if you have a WiFi connection. Assuming that Vista has a WiFi 
connection, shutdown Vista, and reboot into your Linux install, and see if 
WiFi is working. Probably not from your earlier post.

Remove the battery from the laptop for 20-30 mins, then put it back in ( I 
don't have a laptop, so not sure how easy this is). Fire up your Linux 
install, and see if WiFi is working.

Apologies if this hasn't resolved your problem, and you've had to make another 
trip out into the desert to a WiFi free area, where you can once again 
resolve the problem.

All the best Karl.

Nigel.