Advice please about updating Atheros driver

melb

hi there I have been advised by virgin customer support to update my driver on my Acer Aspire 5532 64 GB on windows 7 - the name is AR8132 PCI-3 NDIS 6.20 according to details on my control panel. I have been looking on line but please could anyone point me to the easiest option for download. I saw on one website someone had downloaded it as a zip file and then had to do various things which sounded complicated. I am also wary of just clicking "download now" on a website I do not know. I also found a list of downloads available but the above version was not on it. Would appreciate any help. thanks

closed

why have you been advised?

Oblivion

I'm assuming this is an Atheros WLAN driver. Why not simply go into Device Management then click on Network Adapters where your LAN device should be listed. Click on that and select Update Driver and see if Windows can search out a more recent driver automatically.

melb

thanks for replies. "Why have you been advised?" Well didn't want to bore you with the details but very briefly came back from holiday , son said router/hub stopped working on Thursday. OH reset router (probably shouldn't have) and his MAC worked but 3 laptops could not connect to internet. Rang Virgin OH put him on to me who "took control" of my laptop and told me that because the MAC was connecting OK it was obviously a problem with my laptop and then went on to drivers and scoffed that my Atheros driver was so old. I said it was unlikely that 3 laptops had all developed faults at exactly the same time but he was adamant.
As he was flicking back and forth I could see that there were 3 separate drivers, one of which said it was working. He then helped my son by changing the setting from open network to personal network or something like that. my son then told me what to do and I was able to connect fine.
Really annoyed that if there had not been another laptop to check I would have been left with the advice that my laptop had a problem and would have maybe paid money to have it sorted. however, I thought maybe I should update my driver so started looking. Bet you wished you hadn't asked!!!x

closed

I guessed as much, helpdesk bull - it worked before, and worked on 3 laptops, so nothing to do with driver or the age of the driver - if it aint broke..

Sounds more like the encryption type or wireless password is wrong, is it working now on all machines or not?

melb

oh yes we're all up and running now thanks. maybe I should just leave things as they are and ignore the pillock?!

closed

That's what I would do.

Bollotom

I had the same problem. It is an Atheros driver which I got from Toshiba website. Unzipped and run and it works. If yours is working now I would leave it alone but if it does it again it's the Atheros WLAN driver. :cool: