@Valvados , my experience was similar - with the 10.28 drivers, I plugged the AWUS036NHA into my Supercharge USB3 port and it'd disconnect-reconnect Immediately and indefinitely. Then, plugged in to my other USB3 port and it seemed to work but I was unsure of connection stability. So I felt like 10.25 was more well tested and reverted to them. This was through a cement wall, now I'm without that, perhaps the 10.28 would be clearly better now. If I got it right Kevsamiga will publish .inf-modded drivers for Win8 x64 when set up in testing mode, that have Frag size, RTS and power settings - that sounds awesome, can't wait. Thanks again for all the hard work Kevsamiga.
It's an annoying shutdown bug that looks like it's been around in there for almost forever, but so far I'm having some success using the older Windows Vista X64 versions (On Win7 x64) Other adapters I have don't "shutdown" and lose the ability to view networks at random like this has always done (Both 722N and 036NHA). But we'll see... Also I discovered some drivers behave differently in the SS readings depending whether you have (AL1A or AL3A chip) I'm still testing them all steadily one at a time (my 722N has AL1A and my 036NHA has AL3A version of the chip) which means I can evaluate both versions driver behaviour. If something exists that I can use or share, I'll find it. Because the drivers for this adapter are annoying in Windows and sparse. I didn't even know there was a 10.0.0.28 version till last week. So I just shared it. I'm on Win7 anyway.
I have done this already... https://xiaopan.co/forums/threads/atheros-ralink-modded-unlocked-standalone-drivers.6776/ This is a thread for the official AR9271 drivers (not modded ones)
Hate to say it Mii but that doesn't sound like my experience on 10.0.0.28. Mines a lot more rigid occasional outage.
For those who are on Windows 7 and x64 especially looking for a GUI for your NHA card instead of only the driver... The TP-Link WN722N latest GUI utility works on x64, as does the one for the NETGEAR WNA 1100 If you choose certain versions of the WNA 1100 gui you will also have access to advanced frag and rts and tx power options. Install the software, then force on the driver of your choice and the GUI's will work along with it even though it's supposed to be for netgear or tp-link it's all the same AR9271 chip. I've been playing around with both GUI's today on my NHA. My conclusion is that on the whole, AR9271/Atheros and x64 OS don't mix very well (with the exception of XP x64 drivers), and AR9271 and Windows 8 mix even worse. It might look as if using the XP ones forced on Win7 is the only way to get some kind of stability. If your on Windows 8 then your out of luck because WinXP drivers are not backwards compatible. It makes sense since Atheros only ever did the GUI for use on Windows XP and it seems that's where most of the testing of the drivers went. Some of the problems are : There are high latency issues when gaming. Disconnects under high traffic loads especially using later versioned Win7 drivers. It doesn't like USB 3.0 ports. And can be finicky with certain ports of USB 2. Adapter shuts down at random requiring a re-plug from hours to days. Adapter dissappears after sleep/wake or shutdown/wake cycles on lot's of drivers requiring a re-plug. There are sometimes silly RSSI values reported and spurious channel changing. Progressively spirals signal strength on some drivers and disconnects. Aggressively roams with no way to set parameters. Doesn't like sharing the USB bus with other high drain items, also known to interfere with and turn off other peripherals randomly. Old versions of the driver has a problem in using 2 different atheros adapters on the same computer In short, the hardware is good, but the drivers are very problematic on Windows 7/8. And later drivers seem to work worse not better with more issues and disconnects. The 036NHA only ever shipped with 2.0.0.57. I would recommend not upgrading the driver even further but starting at 2.0.0.24 (2.0.0.22 only works well on AL1A chips) and working your way up when you encounter any issues. Alternatively just skip using/forget about any Win7 drivers altogether and force load the XP ones that actually WORK without driving you nuts.
I, on my driver, had a huge shutdown. This happened when I opened a few tabs and the internet disconnected and, FOR THE FIRST EVER TIME, my whole PC came to halt. I couldn't do a thing!. When I tried to restart the PC, it stayed at the 'shutting down' screen for like 5 minutes (plus) and then I HAD to press the restart button. I unplugged the adapter but nothing happened. I am starting to hate TPL now.
<-------- Classic disconnect under traffic stress. Listed as problem #2 You need to go back to the 2.0.0.32 set for TP-Link WN722N from 2010. Or so I was told. (These should be the ones on your driver disc) It might have a sleep bug requiring a re-plug that later drivers fix, but the latest drivers of V1 flavour from 2011 @ the tp-link website for the WN722N adapter are complete cack and drop out or take a dump at random intervals. The problem isn't TP-Link, it's Atheros, all AR9271 chipped adapters misbehave with these drivers. You might even find solace with drivers numbered even lower than 2.0.0.32 or one of the vista ones. I provided plenty of options for doing just that in the pack. Buying an 036NHA would bring you exactly the same set of problems with the exception of no longer hating TP-Link but ALFA instead.
kevsamiga, I am using the Con driver 2.0.0.62 for my TP-Link WN722N USB. This is the one recommended by Acrylic WiFi for their software to be able to use it in monitor mode, and it works good. I get good stable connections with it, and the power seems good in Windows 8.1, so far along with Windows 7 32 bit. Just thought I would mention this. The only issue I have had so far is, when I was using the feature in Acrylic WiFi to hack a router that no one ever connects to wirelessly. With this you can use a list of passwords and it keeps trying them about 10 per minute. I know that is slow, just wanted to try it, and it does work. But anyways, after running that for 18hrs straight it stopped throwing passwords at the router and could not connect. After rebooting all was fine, most likely this was caused by the POS laptop I do not care about, so I use it just in case something decides to burn out.
Yes. Still haven't gotten around to trying that program out yet as there is a reason I can't remember that something on my system doesn't like NET framework 4, and acrylic wifi needs it if I remember... I have tested monitor mode on Windows with NirSoft's WifiChannelMonitor though. I don't really have a need for fancy graphics and such telling me what I can or can't connect to. Most of the time I like to run lean with just the drivers alone... It's a pity about these drivers still having stop responding issues and other annoyances, as from all the adapters I tested, the Atheros ones are the only ones to get monitor mode in Windows working 100% correctly as shown by acrylic wifi and wifichannelmonitor. The 2.0.0.64 driver which fixes the adapter not recognised from sleep issue is buggy in other ways. The 9.2.0.19 is a complete disaster for these adapters as is any of the Windows 8 drivers. I never heard much if any complaints about ubiquity WifiStation and WifiStation EXT's (AR9271's) disconnecting. The driver versions for those were 2.0.0.24, 8.0.0.54 and 7.7.0.65 and I don't think the software was ever updated either, which is why I was recommending a step down instead of step up. Of course 7.7.0.102 is also fine fox XP as well I found. Most of the XP drivers are... Of course the adapter works perfectly happy on Windows XP and gives no problems, and maybe works fine on a 32-bit OS's as well. The 64-bit versions however seem hosed. If your running Windows 7 32-bit on 2.0.0.62 then your likely to bypass the bug, but I can't do that and lose RAM. Atheros AR9271 and 64-bit OS is a bad mix. These kind of bugs/problems are difficult if not impossible to diagnose because : a) nothing is shown in the event logs when it happens b) the bug can strike when you least expect it to over the course of hours or days. c) you think everything is now working as it should then bang, it's back. Everything is run through a powered hub using a desktop machine, so power is kinda ruled out. Both 722N and 036NHA suffer the same crappy fate (with the NHA being the newer AL3A chip), so it must be the drivers not the hardware.
This is the real deal driver for windows 8.1 Thank you so much for uploading this, I have been searching for like a year, msi still doesn't even have this on their website!
I wouldn't know, I'm not using Windows 8...most reports coming in are that the Windows 8 drivers are no good for this adapter. But they were the absolute latest I could find by Qualcomm after a very exhaustive search and extraction job, wading through too many downloaded files. Hazarding a guess it would seem that 10.0.0.20 & 10.0.0.23 are for Win8 while 10.0.0.25 & 10.0.0.28 are for Win 8.1 (judging by the file sizes). Once I dropped down from 2.0.0.64 to 2.0.0.62 on Windows 7 x64 my adapter seems to be behaving itself better for the most part, because 64-bit and Atheros really don't mix too well. Pity at the MSI site they are also still offering 2.0.0.64 for Win7 which is buggy and broken. 2.0.0.62 is the way to go (as pointed out by Demosthenes) because 2.0.0.64 is significantly worse and bugged, and has a whole array of issues. 9.2.0.19 is just as busted too. Although OTOH 2.0.0.62 still suffers from the random disconnection bug where the driver stops responding and shuts down the adapter which plagues ALL the Windows 7 drivers there are available, something using the XP x86/x64 versions forced on Win 7 doesn't have. In other words when it comes to Windows 7+64-bit+Atheros 9271, none of the available Windows 7 specific drivers are fit for purpose.
No, I'm saying this IS the real deal. I tried dozens of drivers for windows 8 and none of them worked. I knew eventually someone would have them. my wifi adapter worked fine with windows 8 and when I installed 8.1 preview it stopped working, telling me the device was installed, but it didn't actually do anything. it could not be enabled or used at all. when 8.1 full version came out I thought that would fix the problem but it didn't. after trying many drivers I gave up and ran hard wire through my house. I stumbled on this thread yesterday, downloaded your 8.1 driver and poof! BANKAI it started working at full strength!! over 9000!
I see, well that clears that up... If I find anything newer/better out there than 10.0.0.28 for the 036NHA/TP-LINK WN722N for Win 8.1, I'll always post it back to the thread, I've been doing this (along with some custom homebrew ones) for all the different ALFA's adapters, even if I'm not on Win8 myself to the extent that Xiaopan now has a driver resource of mostly all the latest available drivers out there and collections to choose from. The problem with Atheros drivers is that their not issued directly to download at some website, unlike Ralink or Realtek, you have to steal and extract them out of packages for other adapters (which may not have what you are looking for ultimately after all).
No, there never was any "release notes" for Atheros, so you don't really have a clue as an EU what got fixed or changed. And on top of that the latest drivers may not always be the best, so with Atheros card drivers it's like playing the lottery. and figuring out for yourself which one is the "least tolerably buggy" by trial and error.
Yeah, I've had a lot of success with the 10.0.0.28 drivers you posted, though. So thanks for that. I'm running Win 8.1 64, and I no longer have to disable and re-enable the device to get it working again. I still disconnect fairly often, but I'm unsure if it's the adapter, the router, or the modem. Since I'll be replacing the latter two on Wednesday, I'll find out soon.
I would have expected so, since those were the absolute latest I could source, anywhere and I've looked believe me. Yes, the "Random device shutdown" issue requiring a re-plug. Quite a common occurrence under Windows 7 too as it happens to my TP-Link WN722N as well as 036NHA. This is how I derived that it likely wasn't the hardware to blame. No amount of unticking USB power saving options or disabling selective suspend will help either despite what you may read because it still happens regardless. The way I discovered how to fix this never ending random $%££$% problem which is a very old and nasty bug (in my case of Win7 x64 Ult), is to force use the Windows XP drivers of x86 or x64 variety depending on Win7 x86 or x64, but that option is not available for Windows 8/8.1 that hoovered out support for NDIS 5 backward compatibility. How they could not know the random shutdown bug existed in every available Windows 7 driver they put out, but not in the XP ones is beyond me. Then again, there never was an Atheros utility for Vista or Windows 7 or 8, only XP. Not only that, but the Win7 drivers show significantly less networks than the Vista ones, I can't speak for using an x86 OS. So in the end I resigned myself to not even using the Win7 drivers at all despite using that OS, because they're all completely kludged in my view, and they behave unpredictably. They shouldn't be allowed to even advertise Win7 x64 or Win8 support. IT BARELY WORKS. And since Atheros was bought out by Qualcomm, no one cares enough to fix the mess that got left behind that keeps on trashing the device's connectivity, which is shame because the hardware is very good at offloading lot's of wireless functions in hardware, which means you can use the NHA on very old computers, with dog old CPU's and reasonably get away with it. In the beginning, when the first AR9271 drivers were released (2009) following the paper trail, there wasn't even a Vista x64 driver to begin with at release. The attempts afterwards clearly show that Atheros and x64 does not mix. Also according to how I extracted the 9271 files while I was compiling my collection of drivers, I learned that : 10.0.0.23 is the correct driver to be using for Win 8 10.0.0.28 is the correct driver to be using for Win 8.1 Which might be useful.
Hello. Finally... What are the best drivers for Windows 7? And for Windows 8? Regards and thank you for your work.
I don't use any of the Windows 7 designated drivers from Atheros at all from 2.0.0.22 - 2.0.0.64, since they all have significant problems when running under 64-bit, amongst shutting down the adapter at random, and show less networks overall anwyay compared to Vista ones. I either use much older Vista64 drivers on my Win7 x64 Ultimate box (as the last Vista ones too are problematic), or use the WinXP ones. Now for Windows 8, I would say 10.0.0.23. And for Windows 8.1 10.0.0.28 as indicated above. Since there isn't/wasn't any release notes with Atheros drivers, you have to find out what works the best through a process of elimination to a large extent.
