Acer Aspire 7750G - Atheros AR9287 / AR5B97 WLAN not working (SOLVED)

Last week I bought an Acer Aspire 7750G which has the Atheros AR9287 802.11b/g/n WiFi on and after about a week of installing, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers for Windows 7 64-bit I found that the drivers from Acer didn't work nor the ones designed for Windows 7 but actually the Windows XP drivers rule! Let me tell you what I did and maybe it'll solve you problem too with the Atheros AR 9287 / AR5B97 :

Symptoms

1. I installed Windows 7 and installed the driver from the Acer CD. When I tried to connect to any WEP or WPA/2 network it would say that there's a problem and i can't connect. Try the troubleshooting they said... well it's not Windows 7 fault this time it's the actual network adapter.
2. After downloading and installing the drivers from the Acer site, Windows told me that I have an Atheros AR5B97 installed on my laptop. I wouldn't know that because on the laptop sticker it says Acer Nplify 802.11b/g/n.
3. I wanted to double check if Windows was right or wrong (as most of the time is) so I tried Everest from Lavalys which said the my network adapter is an AR 9287. Now there is probably not much of a difference between the two but it was very good to know so I searched and installed Windows 7 drivers for AR 9287. The result : still not connecting to the router.

Fixes

1. So the first fix is to enter the WLAN card properties. You can do that by going to Control Panel => Hardware and Sound => Device Manager (under Devices and Printers)=> double click Network adapters => right click Atheros AR5B97 => Properties => Advanced => 802.11 Bluetooth High Speed select Disable. Also Disable Dynamic MIMO Power Save (if available). This is in case you can connect to the WLAN but the signal drops often.
2. Go to http://www.atheros.cz/atheros-wireless-download.php?chipset=38&system=2 and download the latest driver for Windows XP which is 9.2.0.310 ... install and guess what it actually works. I think this works for both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows.

It was great that I managed to make my WiFi work (don;t have to change it for a more expensive model) and that I could share this with the world.

Till next time ... care for the birds :)