Wireless Quit Working - Troubleshooting

I recently purchased a small Averatec 4100 laptop. It has an AMD Turion64 1.6 GHz CPU, 13.3 WXGA LCD, DVD +/- Burner, 80 GB Hard Drive, 4-in-1 Memory Card Reader, and 802.11g Wireless LAN. It came with 512 of memory which I upgraded to 1GB by scavenging a 512 chip out of my old Compaq laptop. It weighs less than 5 lbs and measures 12.5 x 8.9 x 1.35 inches.

This is a nice little machine that I can carry with me anywhere and not feel like I am toting an anchor. Up to this point my only complaint had been that the Fn and Ctrl keys were reversed. I expect the Ctrl key to be in the far left but they put the Fn key there and so many times I am holding it down instead of the Ctrl key when trying to use shortcuts, argh!

Well, I had my first problem with it today. I was working on it and then some links I clicked on came up as 404 errors. I thought that the site was having problems, but then noticed that the podcast I was streaming had stopped. I tried rebooting, I tried uninstalling the wireless driver and reinstalling it. All to no avail.

I was beginning to make plans to return the thing to Costco in the morning but not looking forward to that since it would mean having to reinstall all my software again.

I got on another computer and downloaded a new version of the wireless driver and while configuring it I saw a little button that said “Turn of RF” and it dawned on me. This machine has a slide switch on the front that allows you to disable the wireless. Somehow had accidentally slid it to ‘off’. I felt like the guy who calls the service tech in to repair the fridge only to find out it had got unplugged by one of the kids (no not me, really).

You always hope when you finally figure out how to fix some problem it will help you next time or you will be able to use this ‘learning experience’ to help someone else. Probably not this one. At least I got the new driver installed.