Asus Eee PC 1008HA Wireless Does Not Work
Before you panic at this title please continue to read on (or skip to the bottom for the fix). I assure you the Asus Eee PC 1008HA is still every bit as good as I briefly described in my earlier hands on impressions.
Asus Eee PC 1008HA Broken Wireless Card Cover Up?
The built in wireless card was working in my Asus Eee PC wonderfully though my initial impressions; however, the wireless card abruptly stopped working for no apparent reason. I tried everything I could think of to remedy the solution not knowing what could have cause the error (literally the netbook showed all the wireless networks in my area and then after the error they all were gone). Sadly, I spent over an hour trying to figure out why the built in wireless card stopped working. I tried installing new drivers, using Windows system restore, deactivating / reactivating / disabling / repairing the wireless card and I even stooped so low as to call Asus tech support.
Asus Tech Support Unaware of the Asus Eee PC 1008HA's existence
The Asus tech support call was hilarious because I had the Asus support rep try to tell me that at first the Asus Eee PC 1008HA didn't exist and then second that it had a removable battery (both times I kindly suggested Google). She even spoke to her team lead who said an Asus Eee PC 1008HA didn't exist. In any case, after convincing the Asus rep that the Asus Eee PC 1008HA did exist she came to the conclusion it simply wasn't in their support system (of course). So she tried several other suggestions I hadn't thought of yet but sadly nothing worked. When all hope was nearly lost I stumbled upon this curiously titled news post over at Asus.com: "Instant Upgrade to enhance your Wi-Fi performance! New BIOS for 1008HA!" The title should read "Instant Upgrade fixes your broken built in wireless card." Sure enough I downloaded the file, flashed the new BIOS update and it resolved the Wireless issue immediately.
The Fix
If you are having any issues with your built in wireless card, you can be near certain that this issue is to blame. Download the new BIOS fix here. For those of you willing to risk it and still buy this netbook, you can find it in white
Tagged: Asus Eee PC 1008HA
Thanks for showing me why I need to keep Windows on this netbook, and dual-boot Linux. I guess there is no way to update the flash without running Windows.
This is great. Thanks a billion times, you are my new hero.
Hello Mohamed,
I’m glad I could help! Hopefully you didn’t suffer through the issues I did before finding this solution?
Thanks for this pointer. Fixed a colleague’s brand-new eee straight away, without exploring a lot of dead ends.
Hey David,
Glad I could be of help! Yah this little bug was a pain to deal with and as you can tell from the story above the Asus technicians didn’t help much hah hah
Thanks for sharing. I did the upgrade (from Windows) and will check if the random disconnections disappear.
If I used the Asus Update option, if offered to install a completely different file (version 801), but I could not find any information about the relation of those two files.
Any hints?
This link is no longer working, but you can easily get the latest BIOS by using the ASUS Update program from Start, Programs, ASUS.
To update BIOS without Windows you can a) use your SD Card b) use your USB ports. RTM
for a) make sure its plugged in, and the only file is names 1008ha.rom or so, and when at power on press Alt-F2
see comments for http://superuser.com/questions/37624/installing-windows-7-on-an-asus-eeepc-1008ha, unrelated but they deal with bios updates with no working OS