Atheros Drivers for Dell 1515 Wireless N Adapter

I had a similar issue with my 1515.  I contacted dell and they stayed remotely logged into my machine for hours and finally gave up.  They are sending me a new wireless card to try.  I have since loaded the drivers from Aetheros and they seemed to work a LOT better.  The ones from dells site kept giving me disconnect issues and weak signal problems.

Aetheros drivers FTW!!!

bbarnhill

I have the same issue with my new Dell laptop as many other people. Can you please tell us that which driver is working better and if the new wireless card fixed the problem.

Thank you

Haik

Well ... Its been almost 2 months since I did this and have since returned the laptop due to other issues (more than likely heat).  It kept locking up on me randomly.  Anyway, I got the drivers from Aetheros's website if I am not mistaken.  The one on the dell website wouldnt let me get more than 15 feet from the access point before the signal degraded GREATLY.  My router is upstairs but my other dell will connect in the bedroom downstairs without problem.  This one with a newer card wouldnt range half that far.  So I changed the drivers and all was fixed.  It made a 'night and day' difference.  I dont know where on their site it was located but I promise you it was on there.  DO NOT use the dell driver it will continue to give you problems.  I have notified them of this problem months ago and they know about it, I am sure they just dont want to deal with it.  I had a tech remote into my machine and waste probably 6 hours of my time and he never figured it out so after that I decided to try the driver from the manufacturers site and it worked.  Wish I had my 6 hours of life back.  But all is well now that I have my HP.

Thanks,

Brad Barnhill

Hi,

I had the same problem when I bought by Dell XPS 13" laptop. The problem is with the Dell 1515 wireless driver. For some reason the range becomes very limited and the quality of the wireless connection is very inconsistant. The wireless card would only work when I placed my laptop within 5 meters of my router in the same room and when it did connect it would often drop off. This was despite updating to the latest Driver from the Dell Support page. The last driver I tried was uploaded on the 13th of July 2009 and did little to improve my problems

However I found a solution!! The Dell 1515 wireless card uses an Atheros Chipset. Even locating the manufacturers driver version proved difficult, with many versions not always working, leading to a trial and error process. So I have posted the link to the driver version I found that works. It is a driver version for Windows 7 and Vista 32 Bit and 64 Bit systems. As soon as I loaded this version up, the range of my wireless adaptor increased 10 fold and the quality of the connection remained consistant, with no immediate faults. I have been using the wireless all weekend, and have had no issues.

To get the card working, download the INF file from the following link and save it to a location on your hard drive:

v7.7.0.259 with modded INF v1.26 for both WinXP x86 and x64
Should work for ALL Atheros Chipset versions

Ordinarily when you right click on an INF file it gives you an option to install, but Vista will throw up a fault when you do this and will not asllow the install to happen, so you need to follow the following method for installation

Open up the control panel and then Device Manager, scrolling down to Network Adaptor. Expand it and you'll see a number of adaptors including Dell 1515 Network Adaptor. Right Click on this and left click Uninstall. A window pops up. Make sure that the tick box "Delete driver software for this device" is ticked. this will completey remove the driver and it's software.

After it's completed, reboot your laptop. When it fires up again, Windows will detect new software. Here's the trick. Cancel/Ignore this. Then return to the Control Panel\Device Manager\Network Adaptors and you'll see a warning on the Network Adaptor. Right Click on Network Adaptor and click on "Update Driver Install". A Window opens up and you need to select browse to location. Go to the folder that you saved the driver from the link above and click ok. A warning message will appear to say that windows can't verify the softwre and do you want to proceed? Click proceed to continue.

Give it a minute and then hey presto, you have successfully installed the driver. You should immediately see the difference when you launch the wireless card and search for networks.

I have included this post because I sepent the guts of three nights trying to figure this one out. I don't understand why dell can't include this driver version on their webpage, but I have done so through this e-community page to ensure that anyone who's having a similar problem will hopefully see this solution and get a swifyt solution.

Also I have included the link below that I have found most useful for the Atheros dirvers and where I found the driver version above. Not all the drivers worked properly, but there are other operating systems above that some people may found useful.

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/15297-atheros-modded-driver-for-windws-7-vista-and-winxp/

I Hope this helps

Regards,

Gavin Byrne

Thanks for all the info. I installed the v7.7.0.259 with modded INF v1.26 for both WinXP x86 and x64 driver and (for now) it seems to be working fine. What I don't quite understand is that it's a WinXP driver installed on Vista... All the other drivers didn't work correctly... This is a very serious issue in my opinion, Dell should be working hard and fast on fixing this. I was soooo frustrated when I received my brand new Dell Inspiron today and the connection was not working properly... Took me a few hours to finnaly get something that seems to work (for now, haven't tried downloading large files already).

I still don't really feel comfortable having a third-party modded WinXP driver... Is the modded version absolutely necessary? Why is this version only working fine?

EDIT: After testing it appears that while it is much better than it was, I am still getting huge connection dropsfor no reason... I can't believe Dell is shipping it's customers such a ***-*** wireless network adapter!! DELL FIX THIS ISSUE AND FAST!

I had same problem and .259 fixed for me...

HI All, I had a neighbor just get a Studio 13 with a wireless-n 1515 adapter.   Had the exact problem that everyone has described in threads.  Connectivity with less than wireless-n and frequent drops and problems reconnecting.   As many have suggested, Google has problems with Dell and as many with HP.  Anyone using a wireless n solution based on AR5009 (atheros) chipset.   Did a lot of web searching as some of the download suggestion links had gone stale.   Found this link (http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/15297-atheros-modded-driver-for-windws-7-vista-and-winxp/) that had multiple drivers to download.   System had 4GB of memory and 64bit OS.   Did trial and error and .259 for x64 fixed the intermittent drop problem.   Others may have a different combo, but lots to choose from.

On the less than wireless n side, others have reminded that any router security needs to WPA, WPA-2, TPIK.   WEP, which is standard on some configs, won't do greater than 54mbps (wireless g equivalent).   As soon as we reset router config and entered WPA-2 key he created for router.  We had stable connection over 54mbps.  

Just some things for folks to consider.

Please see my (haik) 27 August 2009 entry at: http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19260956.aspx for step by step solution.

Haik

Hi Jason

you can download the drivers directly from http://www.atheros.cz

Pls, follow the steps in 27 Aug 2009 12:30AM posting  at http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19260956.aspx

regards,

Haik

Hey I don't know why but I'm not able to get to laptopvideo2go.com and download the drivers that you guys talk about. Is there any way someone can PM me the file or email it to me. If anyone could that would be great.

Thanks,

Jason

I got the driver for the wireless adapter but now it tells me that the drivers are not signed so they wouldn't work properly. Actually i believe its not allowing it to work at all. Any thoughts?

Jason