Recently my Acer Aspire 5050 began demonstrating a strange problem. When it is within close proximity (about 4 feet or less) of my cable modem, the internet trickles to a crawl, and if put right beside the modem, all but the power light goes out and it can't even obtain a signal anymore. Additionally, on every operating system I've tried, with two different wireless adapters (the internal miniPCIe one and a PCMCIA one, both Atheros chipsets), wireless networks can be scanned perfectly fine - but authentication fails. I've tried Debian Stable x86 & x64, Debian Testing x86, Crunchbang x86, Ubuntu 11.10 x86, and Windows 7 x64. All have the same issue - the ability to scan, but inability to authenticate. My suspicion is that something is causing my laptop to emit a much higher than normal EMF (electromagnetic field) which causes interference on nearby electronics and keeps the wireless from authenticating. This is a relatively new issue - the wireless worked just fine in the past. Has anyone experienced this sort of issue with any laptop? Otherwise, does anyone have any insight as to how I might correct this issue? Thank you in advance for any assistance.
I've narrowed it down to an issue with the power adapter - it's not the original and may have the wrong specs for this laptop. When plugged in, the interference happens immediately. When unplugged, everything is normal. The wireless issue may be a coincidence - I'm transplanting a newer wireless adapter from a newer laptop to see if that can connect to my WPA2 network. EDIT: I... think I'm going to crawl into a hole for the rest of my days. I forgot I had the MAC filter enabled... ... ..... .. /facepalm
