Windows 7 - Win7 Pro Wireless networks 'unidentified'

Hello all.

My problem is that I work in a school and we have bought 22x Samsung N145 Plus Netbooks. They use Atheros AR9285 wireless cards and I'm having problems connecting them successfully under Windows 7 to my D-Link access point. The fact is that the security has been set to WPA, using AES. The laptops are the same and are connecting, but 9 times out of 10 they pick up an autoconfiguration IP of 169.x.x.x.

I sometimes get one working, but never have more than one connect at the same time. I need it to just pick up my 'chads.internal' domain network but it rarely does it successfully.

I've tried adding the settings manually, I've tried 3 different network card drivers for WLAN (latest out from the Atheros homepage, second latest as requested to be tried by Samsung tech support, and a version 8.x.x.x driver after reading that 9.x.x.x drivers are 'flaky'), 2 different wireless access points, and the next step that I'm trying is to see if Windows XP will connect!!! I really don't want to have to go down that route!

I've tried rebuilding the TCP/IP stacks and all sorts but I need to come up with a blank every time. Just when I seem to have figured it, it stops working again. I've even tried using static IP addresses but it doesnt even recognise the domain then, it just says 'unidentified network' and gives me a picture of a park bench, which is ironic really as after 8 days of trying to get this working, I feel like getting a bottle of vodka in a brown paper back and drinking myself stupid on a park bench somewhere!

As you can probably tell, all ideas would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Regards,


Adam

Some very basic ideas, which you probably tried already. Have you sorted out the b/g/n thing between cards and access point? Tried the netbooks on another LAN, say, at home? Or tried a different wireless card in one of the netbooks?