by Whilst helping a friend to set up a home wireless network yesterday, I encountered a very unusual issue with the configuration of the wireless adapter on their laptop. The laptop was a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7320 and it was running Windows XP Home and contained an Atheros AR5005G WiFi adapter.
No matter what I tried, Windows simply refused to find any wireless networks. It kept saying that either the adapter is disconnected or the switch is off. The adapter was showing up fine in the Device Manager and there was no sign of a switch on the exterior of the laptop.
In the end, it turns out that you have to press Fn + F2 to enable the WiFi adapter on this model. Apparently, you also have to do this after each reboot, which Fujitsu Siemens claim to be a feature.
You learn something new every day!
Im at the same place you were with the message, the only difference is i have already made mure ive enabled the wireless by pressing the Fn and F2 and i have the little wireless light on but im still getitng the message saying the adapter is switched off or the software isn’t downloaded for the wireless adapter.. its driving me crazy now 🙁
It was workign fine before until my sis sent through a file with a virus on it and ive had to completly wipe n re-start the laptop due to not even being able to turn it on.
Grrrrrr.
If you’ve had to reinstall the laptop then maybe it is indeed a problem with not having the correct software. You could try looking in the Device Manager to see if Windows is detecting the Wireless Adapter correctly.
To do this, select Start, right-click on My Computer and select the Manage option. Then from within Computer Management application, select the Device Manager. Look in the Network Adapters section to see if your Wireless Adapter is present. If it is, then Windows has detected it correctly. If it is not, then that’s your problem.
Just a thought …
omg lol an entire year i have had this laptop and i havent known how to do that, it doesnt tell you in its crappy intruction book !!!!! i bought an adapter instead and when i read this i actually dreaded realising i had wasted my money and been kinda stupid all this time but nooooo of course it had to go and work lol well thanks anyway for that i couldnt find instructions anywhere else .
THANK YOU LOLOLOLOLOLOL
You’re dead right about the User Manual – I was quite annoyed not to find any reference to this either.
Since I wrote this post, I’ve come across a few other laptops who have similar functionality but in each case, it was either a physical switch on the side of the laptop or it was actually documented how to do it.
As for needless purchase of the WiFi adapter, hopefully it wasn’t too expensive. Also, check to see if the adapter you bought is faster in which case you might make use of it after all.
Thanks for the feedback !
man,your a hero was pulling my hair out untill i found this.
many many thanks
No problem belly, glad it was of some use to you.
Thanks for taking the time to post your positive comments.
Same here spent ages looking for that switch had the laptop upside down thinking it was hidden somewhere uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers what a waste of time, Thanks
Anyone know where this wifi software can be downloaded from as I also have similar problems to above
I’m not sure that you need any software to actually enable/disable the WiFi adapter itself. It’s more the combination of the keys shown above that seems to do the trick.
However, if you are looking for the drivers for the WiFi adapter for this laptop, you should be able to get these from the Fujitsu Siemens Support Site.
When you get there, select the Downloads link on the left-hand side, then select Notebooks from the Product Line drop-down list, followed by AMILO, AMILO L/EL and AMILO L7320 from the drop-down lists that follow that. Finally, select your operating system and choose the WLAN entry in the list of drivers that appears.
Hope this helps!
to all those people who said its not in the manual. u know the suspiciously large piece of paper with pics of the computer parts on it, well one of those squares has a wi fi symbol and the words Fn + F2 on it, u press em and u can flick between on and off, its amazing how ppl overlooked this big square. now my only problem is itll connect to wireless network but wont let the internet in, may hav to ethernet it till all the upgrades are done.
Thanks for letting us know about the additional piece of documentation. I don’t recall seeing this at the time (but I know the type of thing you’re referring to). I still feel that this should have been included in the User Manual and would suggest that, based on the earlier feedback to this posting (i.e. many others didn’t see it either), the designers of the supporting documentation could have done a better job.
With regard to your Internet connectivity, if can connect to the wireless network but cannot connect to the Internet, this often means that:
1) Your Wireless Router does not have a valid connection to the Internet
2) Your WiFi adapter (laptop) cannot be authenticated by the router.
In any case, thank you for your feedback.
I had the same problem but sorting it for a friends daughter…. can’t believe the solution was…. wait for it…. wait for it…. LOAD POWER MANAGEMENT software.
P.S. don’t use the fujitsu software (odyssey). Let windows do the work for you.
Myself and my girlfriend spent an hour trying to sort this and she finally let me have a go, and thanks to this website I have just won bragging rights for life.
So thank you so much hahahahahahaha
Dan the Man was wrong!
Hello, I`m helping a friend to set up his new laptop (FS Amilo) with Vista OS. Everything is ok so far, all drivers seems to be installed properly, no question or exclamation marks in the Device Manager tab. I installed the WLAN driver and also everything seems to be alright, no conflicts or any other faults. Now comes the good part, all function keys works fine, except Fn+F1 (wireless turn on key-combination), the wireless sign is on the F1 key, but I also try with F2 – same thing. The green light indicating the status of the adapter is off all the time. From the device properties I saw that this device is enabled. I can`t figure it out, why is that happened ? I`m sure that there is installed wi-fi adapter in the laptop configuration. So guys, help me, any ideas? Regards
I fixed the problem. There is a program in the driver section on the FS site which is called Launcher Manager, after I installed it, everything comes at its place 🙂
hi
i have a fujitsu amilo pro v3515 and would like to no how to turn the
wireless connection on can anybody help me
I found the AMILO Pro V3515 Easy Guide (on the Fujitsu Siemens Support website) and saw the following comment on Page 15 about the WLAN module:
It’s possible that your Amilo model uses a physical switch (perhaps on the side of the laptop) to enable and disable the WiFi instead of a sequence of keypresses.
For the record, I found the user manual by selecting the Manuals link on the left-hand side of the support website. I then selected Notebooks from the Product Line drop-down list, followed by AMILO Pro, AMILO V3xxx and AMILO Pro V3515 from the drop-down lists that followed.
Hi all, I too have a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7320 laptop and went through the same carry on finding the fn+f2 wireless connection when I first got it!
Now, however, I have another problem! I want to connect my laptop to my TV to watch movies. I purchased a VGA to 3RCA cable from ebay which appears to fit correctly to the VGA output at the back of the laptop which has a TV symbol above it and the other end of the cable has 3 RCA plugs which fit the AV3 socket on my TV. The colours are different from the usual red white and yellow, but I found info online explaining which colours go where. I also found advice on another forum which says all you have to do to display the laptop screen contents on the TV is to press fn+f4 (which does have a symbol on it with a laptop and a TV). However I have done this but to no avail – the TV screen remains black! There is no indication on the laptop if pressing these buttons even has any effect on it as there are no LED’s or on-screen confirmation.
Anyone got any ideas? I would be very grateful!
From my perspective, the 3 RCA connectors on the AV socket of a typical television are usually yellow, red and white. The yellow is for video and the red/white pair are for the (stereo) sound. However, I’m a little puzzled by the RCA connections on VGA adapter that you purchased since anything connected to the VGA connector of the laptop is only ever going to be for video (since VGA contains no audio signals). If the colors of the RCA connectors don’t match, there’s a good chance they are not being used correctly.
Most laptops do have some sort of special/function key sequence that is used to display to other devices and it sounds like you have identified the correct function keys for your laptop (based on the icons you describe). It is very rare though that laptops provide a LED to indicate which device it is displaying to but I can tell you that most laptops have the ablity to display to either the laptop (LCD) screen, the external VGA connector or to both at the same time. Thus, you often have to press the special/function key sequence a number of times to get the desired results.
Also, regarding your TV, I would also try to verify that the 3 RCA connectors you describe are in fact AV3. Perhaps, they are AV2, or AV4 or something else.
Finally, you should also try to verify what screen resolution your television can in fact display. It’s entirely possible that it can only do 640×480 in which case you might have to reduce the screen resolution on your laptop to this and try again.
Best of luck!
often, you have to press the function keys a number of times to get the desired results.
Hi, thanks for your reply. The cable I purchased has 3 rca plugs on it. Blue, red and green. I found on another forum advice saying that blue is for the video output and is equivalent to yellow, red is for the right had sound and is the same as the red cable in britain and green is for the left sound, which equivalent to the white cable. I assumed these are the colours used in china as I note alot of these cables are being shipped from Hong Kong on ebay, although, I got mine from a seller in Ireland. My TV is only 3 years old and is pretty modern, it’s a Daewoo 32″ widescreen CRT ( don’t know the model number). The listing for the cable said that these cables will connect the laptop to an HDTV – do you think that this could be something to do with it?
I must say it took me a while to find the function key for the wireless, but I did and all was good for a while. Now my problem is that my keyboard doesn’t work anymore and I’m having to use a USB keyboard instead. But my wireless has managed to turn itself off and of course my USB keyboard doesn’t have the function keys and I need to find a different way to enable the wireless. Any suggestions?
Joanne,
From the sound of it, I doubt the fact that the cable is intended for a HDTV has anything to do with it. After all, it’s just a cable, with no fancy electronic components build into it, right? The only other suggestions I could make would be to try the cable with a friend’s laptop/TV or vice versa. Other than this, I can’t think of anything else off hand.
Erin,
That’s a real pity and I bet you it isn’t something that Fujitsu Siemens thought of when designing that feature. Other laptops have a physical switch on them for the wireless and now I know why. The only suggestion I could make is to see if Fujitsu provide a software program to enable the wireless. You could try their Technical Support site (see earlier in this thread for a link to that)
Erin,
I found this related article today containing details of how to enable/disable the WiFI adapters on a variety of different laptop models.
http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?t=214308
It also contains details about how to do this from the operating system. It’s a long shot but might be worth reading all the same. Let us know if it helps.
Thank god for you guys, my computer is an amilo (I don’t know which one) and to enable wireless it’s actually Fn + F8 or F9, i am not sure which one and I can’t disable it now but anyway, couldn’t have done it without you, big thank you!
Well my instruction manual told me. Read anyway i figured out a new way go to C:/Launch Manager and create a shortcut on the desktop of the icon that looks like a laptop and you can launch from desktop.
for some of you, this may be a solution:
http://forum.fujitsu-siemens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=33998&p=107188&hilit=auto+wifi#p107188
cheers,
Willem, the Netherlands
I need help my laptop wont connect to the internet wirelessly its an amilo but when i right click on the my computer and follow that the wireless connection isnt there. what do i do?
Rebecca,
The original purpose of this article was to describe how to enable the Wireless Adapter on an Amilo laptop. It sounds like you are having this problem but might not have read the original post. Please read it again from the start and see if the answer you are looking for is there.
Hi I have an AMILO L7320, I’ve had it 3 years and it was connected via a router to my home computer. Then one day it all went boom and now my computer has Internet but not my laptop. I rebooted my laptop so now when i put it on and click the Fn+F2 the light comes on but no Internet.
I’ve been messing around with it but still nothing. If I try to access the net it says not available offline.
And do i even need a router?
Thanks
Mary,
There are a couple of things you should clarify before we can help you further:
thanks for such a quick reply. i’m sorry i was so brief its because i really don’t know how this stuff works.
when i brought my laptop i had no idea how to set it up, so i asked a friend who told me i needed a net gear router. so i bought a router and set it up so that my computer with internet, was connected to a router, and that my laptop was connected to the router so had internet.
then one day all of a sudden the internet on my laptop stopped working.
i rebooted the laptop. and since then nothing..(nothing works)
the router i think is broken, because it doesn’t allow internet access to the computer either. but my 1st question is, do i even need a router?
secondly, when i put my laptop on and click fn+f2 the light comes on but nothing else is working
thanks James
The short answer is Yes, you probably do need the router, particularly if you want to access the Internet from your laptop.
Firstly, is allows you to share your Internet connection among all the computers in your home. It also allows you to give friends Internet access when they visit you.
Another benefit of the router is that it allows your various computers to talk to each other (i.e. to share files amongst other things).
It’s possible that the router has some form of security (which is common) that is rejecting your laptop. Perhaps if you talk nicely to your friend, they might be able to provide you with additional assistance.
but the internet doesn’t work on the computer when the routers plugged in. do i need a new router? thanks
if you have fully functioning router, and push fn+f2 on your laptop does the internet automatically work, or is there more to it then that?
because if i put the internet wire into my laptop im still getting nothing
I’m afraid there are too many things that could be the source of your problem here, and it really isn’t possible for me to say for sure based on the limited details you have provided.
Bear in mind that, depending on the type of router you have (ADSL, cable), there may be a username or password required for it to connect to the Internet.
I think you really need to seek the advice of a friend (or the store where you purchased the router) to take it further from here.
Have read through this thread desperately hoping to find a solution to my daughter’s Fujitsu Amilo wireless internet access problem. After much fiddling around, I managed to get it to connect to the internet yesterday via my unsecured BT Voyager wireless set-up. Had to use the Odyssey software to get the laptop recognised.
But at home she is unable to connect to a secure network using the password provided – she’s tried the odyssey connection software, can see the network, inputs the password and all she sees is a “trying to connect to JOHN network” message and nothing happens.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Fiona,
So what you are saying is that the laptop works fine on your unsecured wireless network but does not work on your daughters secured network.The only suggestion I can make here is to try to identify the root cause by process of elimination.
Firstly, you could try connecting your laptop to your daughter’s network – this will validate the password on that. Secondly, you could try switching off the security on your daughter’s network and see if that helps (then reset it and try again).
I’m afraid that I am not familiar with the Odyssey software you are referring to and without a lot more details, cannot think of anything else at this time.
Thanks for this – we’ll try my Acer (which connects to anything in range) and see if that works. I think the hard lesson here is that wireless laptops are not all equal and some are much more difficult to connect than others.
Hi – I’ve installed from the FJ website the recommended Launch Manager and I’m still unable to connect wirelessly. The laptop works without problem directly connected to the Internet. When the Fn + F1 buttons are pressed there is no difference to the display. The Device manager shows the Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adaptor and when selected displays that the device is working properly. Does the Launch Manager need to be activated or is this automatic? Any suggestions extremely welcome.
I’m not familiar with the Launch Manager software you are referring to but you could try the following:
1. Click Start, Connect To, Show All Connections
2. Right-click on the connection for your Wireless Adapter and select Properties
3. In the General tab, enable the two options at the bottom (show icon and notify me)
3. Open the Wireless Networks tab
4. Enable the setting at the top called “Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings”
Now, each time you enable or disable your WiFi adapter using Fn + F1 you should see a little network icon in your system tray. Clicking on this may provide you with additional information on what is happening.
Best of luck
Now
James – many thanks for your reply. Unfortunately your suggestion didn’t resolve the problem. I spoke to an extremely helpful help desk engineer in FJ and he told me that reloading the Launch Manager actually uninstalls it. I reloaded the Launch Manager and this took me to a state where the box to select the Wlan presented itself. I wasn’t able to select the Wlan and the FJ engineer then talked me through a change in the system setup first selecting F2 and enabling the Wlan at Bios time. It now works perfectly. Top marks to FJ a real helpdesk!
Tony,
Many, many thanks for taking the time to post back your success story. It would have been all too easy for you to just get on with it and not bother posting back. However, now that you have done so, this article is the better for it.
Thanks again!
erm i got a L7310GW it seems 2 be missing the actual driver for it but it seems to be not supported by support anymore so the fujitsu have not got the driver on there support page and no matter where i go i cant find it mail me at rocky1193@hotmail.com if u gound the driver and not using driver doctors or anything just the driver download please
William,
I’m afraid I don’t have a driver as the laptop belongs to a friend of mine who has since moved to another country. However, you could try connecting the laptop to the Internet using the Ethernet port (perhaps via a fixed port on a router) and see if you can get Windows Update to fetch a suitable driver from the Microsoft website.
Hello I have a different sort of problem but it runs along the same lines as some of the problems listed above! I have an ordinary Dell desktop computer and have been using a conceptronic wireless usb adapter for my wireless internet for the past year. Suddenly now when i put the adapter into the pc the computer does not read it and the connection box that used to come up as part of the installed conceptronic driver does not appear. Also, try as i might, i cannot find the wireless network tab in the properties of network connections – it just isnt there anymore! The activity light flashes on the adapter but never establishes a link. When i go to device manager i can locate the conceptronic adapter and it appears to be working correctly but i cant even try to connect! It is a strange problem that i cant put my finger on, i think the presence of the conceptronic icon in the tray and the absence of the normal connection box when clicked on has relevance in this mystery (it tells me that windows cannot configure this network connection and that if i have enabled another program to use this connection i should use that). Help would be much appreciated!
i am using amilo li 1718 and i have enabled wireless lan setting from setup by pressing f2 on booting but my wireless button still wont turn the wireless on. what do i do?
i just baught a siemens amilo laptop and wenever i enable wifi the pc just freeses an i have xp last edition service pack 3 can anyone help PLEASE
Rawwr…
I dont know which but my laptop is one of ze fujitsu siemens range and yeah MAHOOSIVE fail on board…
I’ve pressed Fn+F2, Fn+F1…. NOTHING.
Really starting to annoy me…
I NEED WIRELESS!
ARGHHHHH!
=[
*cries*
Some one help? PLEASE?
Pretty please with a wotsit on top!x
Hey. After formatting and installing XP, there is NO wireless adapter in the network connections. Pressing the wireless switch launches it, and its light goes on, but there is No wireless connections manager appear, neither does it recognize the available wireless network.
I installed the driver offered by FS , still the same.
What could the solution be? I googled too much, no resoultion.
@EllyExtacyULTIMATEM
You really should clarify what you mean by “Massive Fail on Board” as this expression is simply too vague for anyone to even attempt to help you.
@ICE
Pressing the Wireless switch really should launch the “Found New Hardware” wizard inside Windows. Does your re-installed XP recognise other types of removable hardware such an USB memory stick etc?
@Everyone Else
the volume of messages on the thread tells me a number of things:
1. The Fujitsu Siemens range of laptops are not the most reliable out there
2. The quality of support on the Fujitsu Siemens website is less than perfect
Please once again bear in mind that I longer have access to the original laptop in question and am therefore unable to make any hard recommendations to your various problems, outside general ones from my own personal experiences.