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Hero Alpha - WiFi Adapter Gone Missing

BarneyC
Level 8
[ONGOING]

UPDATE 10/2/16 - still no real joy. Reverting to 0205 then back to 1304 worked for a day but still broken (see thread)
UPDATE 8/2/16 16:44 - several Windows 10 updates last night and the adapter has disappeared again.
UPDATE 12:18 - reapplied 1402 BIOS and WiFi is still there.
UPDATE 12:09 - downgraded BIOS to 0205 (first revision BIOS) and WiFi has reappeared!
UPDATE 11:25 - downgraded BIOS to 1302 and still no joy.


I set up my new build a few days back with Windows 10 and everything (almost) was working and installed. The only problem I was having was with WOL for the WiFi. Thought I would install the latest WiFi drivers from Asus and after a reboot the network adapter has disappeared!

I've tried reinstalling drivers, resetting bios, and now even reinstalling Windows and the adapter seems to have gone AWOL. Bluetooth is there though.

Any thoughts on what to try next?
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10 REPLIES 10

Chino
Level 15

Chino wrote:
You should share the solution with us. It will help future users no doubt. 🙂


Sorry. Thought updates above might suffice.

Long and short... Something about having 1402 bios and trying to update the latest Win10 wifi drivers borked the adapter. No reapplication of 1402 or 1302 bios, nor a bios reset brought the adapter back. Nor did completely reinstalling Windows.

BUT downgrading bios all the way back to 0204 did the trick. I then jumped straight to 1402 bios with drivers off the shipping dvd and all is good again.

Shutdown the computer last night after a long day of installing stuff and numerous reboots. Today on restart the WiFi adapter has gone awol again. Looking in device manager at hidden devices the drivers and like are there BUT there is a "Code 45 Currently, this hardware device is not connected to the computer" message.

Yesterday evening I installed VMWare Workstation 12 Pro and a pile of Windows updates ran through. I suspect one of those updates is to blame but what a faff to diagnose. Has no one seen this before?

Restored an earlier Windows 10 build clone (yesterday am) when everything was working and still no wifi. Adapter still under hidden devices which would make me suspect an issue with either the BIOS or the motherboard.

BarneyC
Level 8
So today I used the machine for several hours, it was flying along. Whilst I popped out for a bit the machine came out of sleep for some reason and when I got home the screen and keyboard was none responsive. A hard reboot gave me a POST of "overclocking failed" and then into Windows 10 and sure enough the wifi adapter was gone again.

This time I had a good trawl through the event logs and there was an an NDIS error 10317 "miniport Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4A Wireless Network Adapter, {337699f0-a5bd-4065-b476-4a6e8a160eff} had a fatal error: the miniport has failed a power transition to operational power."

This appears to be not that uncommon with boards with integral network adapters and appears to be some weird combination of BIOS, driver and Windows 10 issue. BUT as yet no fix.

I have emailed ASUS technical support as this is getting silly. I just want to be able to use this machine.

ondersma80
Level 7
Strange issue. I have the Hero Alpha and had been using the normal lan connection since purchase and decided I should enable the wifi and check it out. Have been using it for two days (bios 1402) without a single issue. I also use win 10.

I used to experience something like this with my old Z97-Pro (wifi). Sometimes the wifi or my VPN connection would just vanish but reappear if I logged out and back in to windows. Does that work for you?

Aside from that, initially I would suspect a faulty wifi adapter but if it works when you clear settings and revert to an older bios that doesn't really make sense. Mine works fine on 1402 so I wouldn't expect the BIOS either. Strange.

So late yesterday I tried that whole re-jigging the BIOS thing again and it didn't work for me (right now I have a long Cat6 strung across the room). You menioned VPN which has me thinking I wonder if VPN and/or VMWare might play a part, simply as both create and play with new adapters and perhaps they are causing some form of driver interference. Dunno. Worth a check tonight though. I'll kill off Viscosity and try the BIOS flip again.

Success perhaps. Last night removed Viscosity (my OSX VPN client of choice so thought I'd give it a go on Win). 24 hours later the WiFi is still there. At some point over the weekend I will try adding both a different vpn client and also vmware - both of which add new adapters.