Atheros ar9285 Wireless Connection Problem

[fungi]

I have a HP G61 Laptop with built in atheros ar9285 wireless. I can see available networks in wicd manager, but when I try to connect - even with the correct key - I can never connect. Sometimes there aren't any wireless connections listed in wicd. It's sporadic. I can see the light on the wireless button (mostly orange for off) flicker on and then turn off randomly. I can see the wireless adaptor as wlan0 in iwconfig and airmon-ng - using the ath9k driver.

I tried the wired connection on the same network with the wireless and it worked fine.

I tried installing compat-wireless-2.6.33.tar.bz2 which didn't seem to help.

I've installed backtrack on a secondary partition - this isn't vmware.

Any help? Does anybody else have success with atheros ar9285?

Last resort, if there's nothing I can do can someone recommend a usb wireless dongle?

I've searched the forums, google, and tried lots of different things but I can't get any consistent results.

example of commands used:

/etc/init.d/networking start
start-network
wicd manager gui
stop-network
ifconfig wlan0 down
ifconfig wlan0 up
start-network
wicd manager gui

[dromar421]

Not sure if your hp will take ar5007eg model mini pcie might look into that card.I have suggested a few wireless dongles in the form in the first 3 pages of is were you will find them but if you want one of the best look in forms all your answers are here im sure.