Gateway LT 21 from Win 7 Starter to Win 7 Ultimate troubles  

First i would like to say hello to seven forums members.

Ive recently purchased a gateway LT21 netbook, it came loaded with Win 7 Starter. everything was working great. but after i upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate, 3 drivers would not work properly on the machine.

the copy of ultimate is geniune non OEM specific.

the first driver is the WLAN driver, Atheros AR5B95. the card sometimes see's networks but after 10-20 minutes it disconnects and doesnt see any networks anymore. i try enabling and disabling the card + hitting the repair button but to no avail.

sometimes i need to restart a couple times in order for the card to work.

second is the Launch Manager. all shortcut buttons are working except for the FN+F2 which turns the wireless card on and off.

the 3rd driver is the synaptics driver. i see no options is its configurations except for the left and right button.

oh yes, dare i mention that i formatted the entire HD for a clean installation and i ignorantly deleted the recovery partition.... and now gateway wont send me a recovery CD unless its to my old address (the one i got it shipped to) and currently im overseas....

please yelp

Update all drivers from here:

Gateway Support Drivers & Downloads

hey theog, thanks for the tip :)

its kind of obvious to get the latest drivers from gateway website... i already scanned the whole gateway support and contacted them and even tried different drivers posted on their website... to no avail. imagine customer support told me to put back 7 starter. what a solution!


anyone got any less obvious solutions?

thanks merkat,

i already tried drivers from atheros.cz and drivers from synaptics. same results.

but i havent tried launch manager 2.0...

i will try them once again as this is my 10th format maybe itll work.

kevinturbox said:

LT21 netbook
the first driver is the WLAN driver, Atheros AR5B95.

After running the Gateway recovery disk, device manager reports an Atheros 8.0.0.238 driver. Google returns a number of results for the version, including some from Acer site:acer.com 8.0.0.238 - Google Search

all shortcut buttons are working except for the FN+F2 which turns the wireless card on and off.

Gateway Power Management 4.05.3004 gets this to work on my clean install. I'm not sure what it changes, but fn+F2 still works after uninstalling the program. Gateway Power Management Application Version 4.05.3004

the 3rd driver is the synaptics driver. i see no options is its configurations except for the left and right button.

My LT21 has an Alps touchpad, rather than one from Synaptics.

Dear Power Cat,

thank you for the reply,

first i wanna tell you that the driver posted on Gateway website for LT21 is Atheros driver is 8.0.0.259 which is different from what you posted. that means there is hope

second the driver for launch manager that is posted is 3.0.0.3, which is also different. i will try these tomorrow as i am too tired.

as for the touchpad, i swear i remember having the synaptics drivers all working and displaying tons of options. but i installed the Alps one and everything is working perfectly

ill give u the big thank you after all your drivers works

thanks again everyone for your replies.

pwrcatkstate said:

kevinturbox said:

LT21 netbook
the first driver is the WLAN driver, Atheros AR5B95.

After running the Gateway recovery disk, device manager reports an Atheros 8.0.0.238 driver. Google returns a number of results for the version, including some from Acer site:acer.com 8.0.0.238 - Google Search

all shortcut buttons are working except for the FN+F2 which turns the wireless card on and off.

Gateway Power Management 4.05.3004 gets this to work on my clean install. I'm not sure what it changes, but fn+F2 still works after uninstalling the program. Gateway Power Management Application Version 4.05.3004

the 3rd driver is the synaptics driver. i see no options is its configurations except for the left and right button.

My LT21 has an Alps touchpad, rather than one from Synaptics.

Dear Power Cat,

i have installed Gateway Power Management, then reinstalled launch manager after it and the fn+f2 works perfectly just like before,

as for the wireless driver, for some reason, after installing the 8.0.0.259 atheros driver for the 50th time, it doesnt disconnect anymore. i wanted to install .238 that you recommended, but i thought to myself, it aint broken, why fix it?

as for the touchpad, ive installed Alps drivers and the touchpad works perfectly with multi gesturing and all. i could swear it had synaptics driver.


thanks for the help man, really appreciate it. kudos!

i love my Gateway netbook again :)