I discovered that I couldn’t use the wired Ethernet port on my Asus Eee PC 1000HA running Windows 7 Beta while in Seattle visiting Microsoft earlier this month. This was a problem since the Seattle Sheraton Hotel room I was in didn’t provide WiFi access – just wired Ethernet access.

However, when I fired up the Eee PC this evening, Windows 7 Beta had a notification icon telling me that a solution had been found (see screenshot above). So, I downloaded the Atheros AR8131/AR8132 Ethernet Controller driver that was linked in Microsoft’s notification page and installed it. Atheros provides the driver in a RAR archive file. So, I had to download and install 7-Zip to unpack it.

I tested wired Ethernet access after installing the driver on the Eee PC 1000HA and everything worked fine. I wish this driver was available 4 weeks ago!