Aspire 5020 wireless switch seems broke down

Locate the Wireless LAN switch located on the front of your Acer Notebook. This could be located on the upper row on a laptop it will have the radiation look (((•))) Make sure its pressed on. Move the switch to the right to turn on Wireless connections. Right-click the network icon located on the system tray next to the clock. You should see a list of available wireless networks. Select the network you want to connect to and click "Connect."
or

Power on the Acer Aspire laptop. Right-click the wireless Internet icon in the lower right corner of the desktop. Select "Enable" from the pull-down menu. Right-click the wireless icon again. Select to view all available wireless networks in the area. Momentarily a window appears with all of the available Wi-Fi networks. Select the Wi-Fi network you want to connect to, then type in the password (if required). Click "Connect," and your Acer Aspire computer connects to the Internet. Hope this helps.

Locate the Wireless LAN switch located on the front of your Acer Notebook.

Move the switch to the right to turn on Wireless connections.

Right-click the network icon located on the system tray next to the clock.

You should see a list of available wireless networks.

Select the network you want to connect to and click "Connect."

or

Power on the Acer Aspire laptop.

Right-click the wireless Internet icon in the lower right corner of the desktop.

Select "Enable" from the pull-down menu.

Right-click the wireless icon again.

Select to view all available wireless networks in the area.

Momentarily a window appears with all of the available Wi-Fi networks.

Select the Wi-Fi network you want to connect to, then type in the password (if required).

Click "Connect," and your Acer Aspire computer connects to the Internet.

hope this helps

First go to the control panel > device manager (In XP the manager is in the System folder). Scroll down to network adapters, open it and look at the adapters listed....there should be two, one should be an ethernet card and the other a wireless or WLAN card. Look to see if there are yellow icons by their names. This usualy indicates a problem with either the card or the drivers running them. If they do not have yellow trouble symbols by them, then make sure the wireless switch is turned on either by switch on the outside of the laptop or by an Fn key combination. In the case of your laptop, the switches were optional, but just in case look on the front edge of your laptop, by the audio jacks on the left side should be your wlan switch, make sure it is in the "on" position. If there are yellow icons by the wireless, try right clicking on the adapter and uninstalling it. Then reboot, make sure you are connected to the internet via ethernet cable, you will want to let windows search windows update for a new driver when it reinstalls the device upon rebooting. See if that takes care of the problem. Also, if you have changed the way your system boots like say "selective startup" through the msconfig command, that may need to be temp. changed until this is cleared up, then you can go back to it.

the drivers should be installed in windows 7 by default, their so called "smart wizard" has some compatibility issues with windows 7, I get it to load up and it will shut down or glitch out. What I did was uninstall the downloaded driver and use the default windows drivers, flipped the switch off to my built in G wifi adapter and the netgear automatically kicked in and took over as the default wireless adapter.

Hi, Welcome to FixYa.

1. Go to the run in start , and type "services.msc".

2. On the Services screen, scroll down until you find "Wireless Zero Configuration".

3. Start this service.

4. Now go to "Network Connections" and right click your wireless adapter icon.

5. Enable the option for wireless connection.

Also check are you getting a wireless icon on the taskbar.

Try this link as well:
http://www.vista4beginners.com/How-to-setup-a-wireless-connection

---------------------------------------------------------------
We appreciate your feedback; it will help us improve this Web site.
Please select 'YES' if satisfied.

Ok, i dont know exaclty how to do this, but look for a wireless icon, or something that looks like a wireless representation on the F keys. ex: "F10, F11". Press FN and that key to turn on\off your adapter.
Wish i could help more, Good luck

The following solution has worked for me:
- Right-click "My computer" on the start menu, and select "Properties"
- Go to the "Hardware" tab, and select "Device Manager"
- Check if the wireless adapter is listed under "Network adapters"
- If it's not listed, right-click and select "Scan for hardware changes"

With any luck, the wireless adapter should be detected, and the drivers installed.

I believe that you can turn these functions on and off via the Network Connections that you can access from the control panel.

In Windows XP:
Click on START button
Select Control Panel
Click on Network Connections

In Windows Vista:
Click on START button
Select Control Panel
Select Network and Internet
Select Network and Sharing Center
In left panel, select Manage Network Connections

Once here, you should see your wireless adapter and your bluetooth adapter. If you Right-Click on either connection, a menu will pop up and you can choose to Enable or Disable the connection without the button on the front of your computer.

Hope this helps.

Although the wireless switch on your Acer does turn on/off your wireless card, you will also need to make sure that your operating system (Windows) has the wireless card enabled.

Do the following:

1. Go to Control Panel (Start -> Control Panel)
2. Double-click Network Connections
3. Right-click on Wireless Network Connection / WLAN (you can tell it is disabled if the icon is greyed)
   
   
4. Click on "Enable" (if you see Disable, your network is already enabled)
   

You should check the bottom-right-hand area of your screen (in the menu bar) for your wireless icon. If this is not appearing, you'll have to go into Network Connections again and do the following:

1. Right-click on Wireless Network Connection (your wireless network adapter)
2. Select Properties
3. Click the checkbox that says "Show icon in notification area when connected"
   
4. Now click on the Wireless Networks tab (at the top of this dialogue box)
5. Scan for a network and connect to it.
   

you can go to network connections in control panel, then right click on the wireless adapter icon and select connect or enable.