Yeh, if I can't easily replace the internal adaptor I will get a PCMIA card. The USB stick is currently being helped to stay in place by the judicious use of some black insulating tape.

Device Manager says there is a problem with the wi-fi adaptor which I suppose is more evidence that is no longer of this world. To be honest whenever I have rebooted the router it has struggled to re-establish the link until I reboot the laptop too.

Opened it up and found the card. Tried re-seating it but no joy so I have ordered a replacement from Amazon. It is an Intel 4965AGN which seems to be still their current model so have gone for the same again.

As I said earlier, remember which way round the antenna leads go and you'll find it easier if you attach them to the new card before you fit it.

In reply to a post by flippery:

..... Most laptops these days have the Wireless chip embedded in motherboard...

My memory is shot but I don't remember seeing an embedded card on a laptop in probably the last decade or so.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

Opened it up and found the card. Tried re-seating it but no joy so I have ordered a replacement from Amazon. It is an Intel 4965AGN which seems to be still their current model so have gone for the same again.

Lets hope your laptop isn't HP?

HP and some others only allow you to install their parts, so an amazon part would not work.

This is because some laptop manufacturers setup a bios whitelist which has specified part numbers. The bios rejects anything else and generally the laptop wont boot up until the unspecified parts removed.

Otherwise you should be fine! These things are so easy to replace and I've done it myself before.

A HP intel wifi card is different to a standard intel wifi card. Even if they're the same model. So you have to specifically buy the HP part number.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Wed 01-Aug-12 22:18:06)

It is and Acer and I am replacing an Intel card with the same model number. There are only two leads attached and I found those easier to ease off and on with the card screwed in position. There is a third terminal which had nothing attached.

Perfect !!

With 3 antenna you can get some pretty good cards! (not that you need one now)

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 02-Aug-12 08:02:10)

I am not sure what you mean by 3 antenna. There are three terminal points on the card itself. A black lead is attached to the first and a grey one attached to the third with nothing attached the middle one. Are these the antenna leads? In which case there are only two antenna built into the laptop even if the card itself can take three. Or am I misunderstanding?

Well, fitted the new card and that doesn't work either. So it is either a software problem, something upstream of the card itself or the new card was DOA (bit of a coinkidenky).

Curiouser and curiouser! Checked again this morning and it was not working. Happened to update ZoneAlarm to the latest free version, rebooted and it is now working! At a guess the old card would work as well. Can ZA interfere with internal connections like this?