Earlier today, my son told me that the internet connection on his Asus Eee PC 1000HE had stopped working. According to him, he had been streaming a movie on Netflix when the connection suddenly dropped. Being a Mac guy, I always dread having to troubleshoot Windows issues, especially when it comes to networking problems. Nonetheless, I waded in…
My first stop was the Network Settings. Unfortunately, it appeared as if the computer couldn’t see the wireless card. Next stop, the Device Manager. Here again, the network card was invisible. Unlikely as it seemed given that the computer is just under a month old, I started thinking that the wireless card had died. The good news was that we were still within Amazon’s 30 day return window. The bad news was that I’d have to re-configure the computer if we needed to swap it out.
Just as I was losing hope, I decided to IM a friend for help. He asked whether or not there was a switch on the side of the computer to turn the wireless card on/off. Being a Mac user, I had never heard of such a thing — in Mac OS X, the wireless card is controlled by a pulldown menu in the menubar. On top of that, the wireless card remains visible in the Apple System Profiler even when it’s turned off. Thus, I wasn’t holding out much hope that this would be the solution.
Unfortunately, there was no switch for toggling the network card. The question itself, however, made me curious enough to do something that I rarely ever do… I cracked open the User Manual. And guess what? I found the solution.
On the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, the wireless card can be toggled on/off by pressing Fn-F2. Apparently my son inadvertently hit that key combo (what are the odds?) thereby shutting down the wireless card. Something else that I learned was that, unlike the case with Macs, the wireless card on a Windows-based PC can’t be seen by the Device Manager when it’s turned off.
Get free updates via e-mail!
Related articles...
- MacBook Airport Network Getting Full Bars, No Internet Connection
- Belkin N+ Wireless Router Not Compatible With HFS+ Hard Drives
- DropBox Fails to Sync if Filenames Have Special Characters
- How Many Digital Pictures Will My Memory Card Hold?
- Belkin N+ Wireless Router Drops Connections
- Watch Hulu on Your Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, or Xbox 360
- Configuring the Brother 2170W Wireless Laser Printer to Work With a Mac
- Belkin N+ Wireless Router Firmware Update Failed
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I had a similar problem: I wound up needing to enable WLAN in the BIOS itself after my computer’s battery went completely dry.
Thank you so much! I had the exact same problem and nothing else worked!
Yes, thanks for sharing your solution. My wife’s Eee did this, and being a Mac person too I was stumped by the weird Windows Networks settings etc.
Unbelivable!! I have been looking for a solution for TWO WEEKS!! Thanks so much
Fantastic…Thank you so much! I worked on my daughter’s 900HD 2 hrs. trying to figure it out.
Thanks! So glad I found this. I thought my card was toast.
Thanks. Worked like a champ!
That solved my problem (Eee PC1005) too!!
Thanks
One more thank you…
Yes! One more thank you.