MBA wifi antenna?

[bexamous]

So got a MBA just after Xmas. The other week while using screen went black. Took it in and they spent a week repairing it-- replaced main board or whatever they call it. Picked it up yesterday and was happy it worked, got home and realized wifi doesn't work. Well it does... but I need to be a few feet from router and even then it won't stay connected for more than 10-20 seconds during which time pinging router returns ~70%pl and ping is like >1000ms. Lame.

Anyways, I'm guessing they didn't connect the wifi antenna? Anyone knkow if this is easy to get to? Found out case uses T5 screws, and of coarse I have T4 T6 T7 T8 T10. So not sure if its worth a trip to hardware store.

 

[Terpfen]

Take it back and tell them that their repair was incomplete, as something else broke.

 

[MaxBurn]

Yup, take it back. The wifi card is next to the CDrom and the antennas go through that hinge into the display so that all had to be disturbed in the work they did.

 

[Zumino Zufeilon]

Ayupper, what they said.

Decent chance they just forgot to plug the antenna's back in**. Tech's are human after all.



**Symptom of working a few feet away, but only "just" implies that the wifi card is working, just the antenna/antenna connector is disturbed. As it is required to unplug the antenna to replace the logic board, and those are annoyingly small plugs, it's an easy point to overlook. I know I've forgotten to plug them in before.

 

[tL4-il]

I think making people afraid of open their *owned* computers is bad advice, alas it tends to void their warranty. If you do decide to go forward (perhaps just to save time), note that there might be one unconnected antenna cable - this was the case with my x61t, which had 3 antenna cables as preparation for a 802.11n wi-fi card, though only 2 were actually in use since it came with a 802.11g card (the third one was taped with a protective cover to the MB ).