Hi, I have a Lenovo G560, and I dicovered and applied a bios mod to allow me to change my internal wifi adapter. I want to do this to be able to connect to my wireless router at higher speeds than the max 72Mbps the original card supports. I took out the half-mini pcie broadcomm and placed the new full mini pcie AzureWave ar5bxb72 (atheros 5008x) - I have 2 different slots for half and full mini pcie cards. All went well and my new card was recognized by windows 7 (x64 home premium). I installed a couple of drivers, but the problem is the same: it will not show me any wireless networks. It is enabled, device manager shows that is is working correctly. Windows 7 diagnose of the adapter tells me to press the HW switch on (says wireless radio is off). But I switch it on/off and it does not affect the new card, tried disabling/enabling in network settings. Also pressing fn+f5 only shows me the bluetooth radio now, wifi is not listed. Any thoughts will be appreciated.
You uninstalled the old drivers before installing new ones? It could have been internal conflicts, Uninstall and reinstall the drivers, it might work; Are you sure that the new adapter was working fine? You bought new?
It was not a new adapter, not sure if it worked fine... I have tried multiple uninstall, install, updates of the drivers I found (like 3 of them), same issue. I even uninstalled all antivirus/firewall.
Well if you installed the drivers correctly and the adapter is not broke, Should everything work properly Post a screenshot of your device manager please You seem new to MDL, welcome.
I think I have figured something out, did some testing with old card and new card. The problem seems to be that out of the 2 pcie slots I have (one full size and one half-size), only the half size port is linked to the hardware switch. So I can only use wifi card on the pcie half size port. It's really weird because the new atheros is full size and I cannot put the screws in. There is space if I just leave it dangling there, but it does not seem right to leave it there, I am afraid of a short circuit. I just don't understand why the full size PCIE port is there for if I cannot use it with a wifi card, is it there for another purpose? can anything work there if there is no hardware switch for it? can I somehow override this limitation? Is it a bios block... Lots of questions, but I guess I cannot find the answer unless there is someone with specific lenovo hardware experience. Thanks for the welcome to the MDL forums. I found it by searching for a bios mod. And it worked (except for my full size pcie port not working as it should)
After some more google-ing I think I must tape pin 20 of the pcie wifi adapter for it to be always on. Will give it a try.