Dell XPS m1330 Wireless problem...

Bass Cadet

I've had the 1330 for a couple of months now and had no problem connecting to a wireless network over Christmas, etc. At my home house I dont have a wireless connection yet, just ADSL broadband through a Smart modem, hooked up to the laptop. I have been able to connect to wireless networks where available but all of a sudden yesterday, it didn't seem to pick up anything and I tried it in 2 seperate houses, both of which had other laptops successfully connected to the wireless network, so nothing wrong with the actual network(s) or router.

The wireless switch is turned on obviously and I havn't downloaded anything recently which could cause a conflict (as far as I know), however, my anti-virus software did catch and quarantine a high-risk trojan yesterday...could this be causing my laptop to not even pick up the wireless networks or maybe it's a Vista issue

Google doesn't seem to throw up any answers...Cheers for any help

Username!

Click "Diagnose Why Windows Cant Find Any Wireless Networks" from the "Connect To" menu in the Start Menu.

My guess is that the Wireless switch is turned off on your laptop or the Dell software has it disabled to save power (Vista also does this in its new poxy power scheme setup).

Bass Cadet

Username! wrote: »

Click "Diagnose Why Windows Cant Find Any Wireless Networks" from the "Connect To" menu in the Start Menu.

My guess is that the Wireless switch is turned off on your laptop or the Dell software has it disabled to save power (Vista also does this in its new poxy power scheme setup).

Tried that before and it comes up with the same thing 'a cable needs to be re-inserted' or 'the wireless switch has to be turned on'. The switch is turned on and shows up on the screen (in Vista) as being on, ie when the switch is turned on, the wi-fi and wireless logo pops up

Bass Cadet

Sorted it...It was in fact the trojan virus that was preventing me from accessing the wireless network. I thought it was deleted from my system but obviously not and it was only when I installed new windows updates and restarted my system that the trojan was fully removed and i could access the wireless signal again...bizarre! someone has been looking at dodgy porn sites!! :mad:;)

Ouijaboard

Had problems with my m1330 and wifi conectivity when i first got the laptop, it would find a connection but could not connect, it would see local access only, it would not reconnect to wifi after coming out of standby and needed to be restarted.
It drove me mad and never really got a definitive answer as to why it was happening but by going to the dell drivers site and upgrading the drivers its been fine since. So I will put it down to being a driver issue and also not helped by vistas management of wifi.

Ouijaboard

well done obviously trojans lying around the system dont help much either

Bass Cadet

cougar1 wrote: »

Had problems with my m1330 and wifi conectivity when i first got the laptop, it would find a connection but could not connect, it would see local access only, it would not reconnect to wifi after coming out of standby and needed to be restarted.
It drove me mad and never really got a definitive answer as to why it was happening but by going to the dell drivers site and upgrading the drivers its been fine since. So I will put it down to being a driver issue and also not helped by vistas management of wifi.

this is interesting as I have a wireless modem that I want to use in the office but can only seem to get local access only (LAN) and it wont connect to the internet. Was the wireless modem a Netgear DG834GT by any chance? Thats the one I'm having problems with. I'll check out the Dell drivers site and see if the 1330 needs an upgrade...

Ouijaboard

It was the standard netopia wifi modem that eircom ship; think the model no is 3347W or so. The problem wasnt modem related it was vista wifi management/driver related.
I've seen vista do some strange things with wifi access on various pcs (such as the local access only issue) even when the signal is strong and works fine with xp. Try to get the latest drivers for whatever
card you are using to access the netgear with. Also if its still flaky you can disable vista wifi management and set it to use the manufacturers driver management as in xp, see: http://www.technipages.com/vista-enabledisable-wireless-autotuning-feature.html

Also re the local access only issue, a friend who was tearing his hair out with this issue on his desktop solved it by moving his router slightly nearer to his desktop and gradually moving the antenna on his pci card until he hit a 'sweet spot', its now slightly diagonal at about 60deg as opposed to upright and he gets both local and internet access. If he moves it even +-5deg from that spot he goes back to 'local access only'. These issues never occured with xp.
Hope you sort it out

Bass Cadet

cougar1 wrote: »

It was the standard netopia wifi modem that eircom ship; think the model no is 3347W or so. The problem wasnt modem related it was vista wifi management/driver related.
I've seen vista do some strange things with wifi access on various pcs (such as the local access only issue) even when the signal is strong and works fine with xp. Try to get the latest drivers for whatever
card you are using to access the netgear with. Also if its still flaky you can disable vista wifi management and set it to use the manufacturers driver management as in xp, see: http://www.technipages.com/vista-enabledisable-wireless-autotuning-feature.html

Also re the local access only issue, a friend who was tearing his hair out with this issue on his desktop solved it by moving his router slightly nearer to his desktop and gradually moving the antenna on his pci card until he hit a 'sweet spot', its now slightly diagonal at about 60deg as opposed to upright and he gets both local and internet access. If he moves it even +-5deg from that spot he goes back to 'local access only'. These issues never occured with xp.
Hope you sort it out

cheers for the advice...I actually got it sorted but by using my Smart modem (Aolynk) as a bridge, hooked up to the netgear wireless router. Once I could connect with the netgear (through ethernet cable) I just went to the setup page in the browser, saved all the settings, then turned everything off, took away the Smart modem and left the netgear to power on, wireless. I could then pick it up on my laptop. I can't seem to get any of the other guys laptops to pick it up though so might try your suggestion above as doing what I did doesn't seem to work for theirs (an XP and Vista machine). Weird and damn head-wrecking stuff!

Bass Cadet

Bass Cadet wrote: »

I can't seem to get any of the other guys laptops to pick it up though so might try your suggestion above as doing what I did doesn't seem to work for theirs (an XP and Vista machine). Weird and damn head-wrecking stuff!

Sorted this out aswell, finally. For anyone having problems with a netgear DG834GT wireless router in the future...I had to assign the mac address for each of the laptops in order for the router to allow them onto the network, giving internet access. With local access to the LAN only, In the 'wireless settings' on the router user page, ('type 192.168.0.1' (i think) into web browser address bar), click the 'access' button towards the bottom of the page which should bring you into a page with the computers that the wireless router has recognised. You have to 'add' each one individually with mac address automatically detected.

There is an option to turn off (disable) this feature which should give any computer within range access, however when I did this, the router did not pick up anything so I had to keep the feature enabled. I suppose it doubles as a good security feature aswell so no harm done