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Extremely Frustrating
i have had my Dell Xps 12 for a good year now. but have not been able to use fully to it's potential since buying it. the one and only problem i have had with it that keeps me from using fully is the wifi connection problem. you see every time i connect to a wifi it will take a 5-10 minutes to connect and once it does it will tell that the connection is limited. due to this my laptop has been having trouble downloading the necessary updates it needs. i find it very frustrating. if there is a simple way to resolve this please tell me. i'm pretty short on money right now since my family is currently in the middle of moving and we need every penny for the new place. so if i can fix this without having to take it a tech person and pay big money for it i would greatly appreciate it!
DELL-Todd S
1.8K Posts
0
May 12th, 2015 12:00
HI,
Having recently moved I fully understand the cash crunch, so I totally get the frustration. I'm going to assume that you have Windows 8.1 on that system, so I did a quick google search to try and find some links that may help you.
Video: How to fix Limited Connectivity Message in Windows 8.1
Another Video
Microsoft Forum thread on Limited Connectivity
Toms Hardware Forum Thread
Check out the forum thread links first, they'll be quicker / easier to load. If you need additional help, then check out the video links.
I hope this helps and good luck with the move.
Todd
timotheusd
30 Posts
1
May 13th, 2015 13:00
Looks like the XPS 12 still has a wired ethernet port. If it does, try using that
If everything works fine on a wired connection, the issue has been isolated to the wireless card in your Dell, or some form of local radio interference.
Also, see if the issue is limited to your router. Take your laptop to a friend's house, or someplace with open Wi-Fi, and see if WiFi works there.
If you have the same issue on wired and wireless, the issue is probably higher up in the stack. (a greater geek than I once told me to always troubleshoot network connectivity issues from the bottom of the stack and work your way up.)
Physical (2.4Ghz Carrier wave or UTP copper wiring)
Data Link: Does the port light up? can you "See" the AP?
Network: Has your client been assigned an IP address via DHCP? If so, can you ping your router? can you ping google?
Transport: Can you open a TCP connection? can you get a UDP response, (like DNS)
If you've gotten as far as transport, and things are working, you're probably only having issues with a specific application, most likely related to that app being misconfigured, or that specific remote server being down.
I have an app called DNS Lookup on my phone so that if DNS doesn't resolve, I can look up the IP address for google and ping it by its IP address. If you can ping google by IP and not by domain name, try manually setting your DNS servers for the wireless connection in network properties. try open DNS: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 google DNS 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
Lastly, network cards can and do go bad. it's happened far more often to wireless cards than wired ones. (I've only had one wired card go bad without some extenuating circumstance like a power surge that came in through the Cable Modem, fried the router, the switch and all the cards.) I've seen several internal laptop wireless cards go bad.
If you have a USB Wifi adapter and that works, It's almost certainly the Mini PCIe wifi card.
there is usually a panel on the computer that you can remove to reveal the memory and WiFi cards. There's a remote chance that something is wrong with the antennas in the notebook, or that they are not connected properly
That's all I can think of at the moment, let us know if any of that helps.