ASPIRE 5680 WIN7 recognizes Intel 7260AC wifi pcie card but the wifi slider/button remains inactive

I have upgraded my aspire 5680 (latest bios 3.60) with a intel 7260AC wifi pcie card (win7 ultimate). The card is recognized by windows and the drivers are installed without problems. The network control center shows the adapter as enabled, BUT the slider button (in the front of the laptop) is dead. So the wifi is deactivated and no networks can been detected.

Probably a BIOS issue. When i turn on the appropriate bit in the EC controler (via special software), the wifi LED goes on and the slider button works fine. The WiFi is enabled and all works fine. But this solution is only a work around. I would appreciate any ideas, how the BIOS can be modified to recognize the card.

Accepted answers

All comments

JackE

Does Device Mgr show any device warnings, errors or conflicts?

Jack E/NJ

IIAT

Hi Jack,

no, at all (no errors/warnings in all cases).

To avoid the EC contoller setting, now i have covered pin 51 (on the side with the antennas, with tape) of the wifi pcie card. So WiFi (the card) is permanently activated at startup (deactivation still possible via the device manager/prop menu etc.). This works fine with WIN7 and WIN10 (i have upgrated, no problems). In this case (taped pin) the EC controller bit setting (0 or 1) has no impact. LED is allways off.

Similar issue with pin 20 (opposite side, at the BACK of the card) for the Bluetooth (testet, but finaly i left pin 20 as is -i.e. not taped-, because i dont use the 7260 bluetooth).

Positive point for this method: works for windows and linux etc. Negative point is only the LEDs functionality (wifi==>pin51 and/or bluetooth==> pin20) at the front (allways off).