Inspiron Mini 9, Ubuntu, wireless issues

Just got one with XP. Same issue. Spent 3 phone calls over entire day yesterday with Dell trying to resolve. They were supposed to call methis morning to walk me through taking xp off and then reloading all programs to find the error.

Course they never called.  I called to try to return this thing  but cust. service is onlt open Mon_Fri.  SO sinc e I realized I would have this for another2 days I started fiddling with it again.

I was only able to connect to the internet for like 5 mins at a time at first. THen uniinstalled macafee. Just uninstalled google desktop and was still losing connection after 45 mins.  Then I just removed my wireless network, re-added it and after another 47 mins it lost the signal completely again.  But 5 seconds later it went back online. 

I hope this helps. and I hope I stop having these issues as well because this little mini is pretty cool.

yes, that does help.  You are the only other person I have heard of having this issue and I have searched a lot of forums.  Plus, it means that it's most likly a harware issue not something to do with drivers and operating systems.

I appriciate your input!

JRS

According to Dell it is not a hardware issue. They remotely accessed my system yesterday and told me the hardware was all good. Thats why they wanted me to reboot. As you know this system has no optical drive and if  I was gonna buy one so I could spend 3 houirs on the phone with them to help me reboot.  When I said I wanted a NEW system they said I cant because its not a hardware issue.

I have been using the mini for the last 90 plus minutes with only a 5 second hiccup that I described in my last post.  I would remove any useless programs you have on there and I think eventually your problem will be resolved.

Larry,

I'm having similar problems with my mini 910.  I could sporadically get wireless to work in Ubuntu, then decided to try Windows XP Home and am still having the same problem.  I switched my router over to WPA2 based on comments from another post.  After doing this the wireless on my 910 worked for about five minutes then quit.  What I noticed was that in the Windows XP (Home SP1) device manager, I no longer had a wireless adapter - it just dissappeared!  I tried refreshing (F5 in dev man) and rebooted several times to no avail.  I ran out of time and am back at work but will be hitting this tonight.   What gives?  Since I was also having problems similar to this in Ubuntu could this be a hardware problem?   I'm thinking there might be a thermal issue since it works for several minutes after a cold boot then quits.  Sorry for the duplicate post but I saw that folks above had wireless problems on their mini 910 in both Ubuntu and Windows.

-Steve

yes, that does help.  You are the only other person I have heard of having this issue and I have searched a lot of forums.

Actually, I had the same problem with my (XP) Mini when I first set up my wireless network.  In my case the problem was interference from neighboring networks.  By default, I tend to switch to channel 1 (for a number of minor reasons), however, in this case that backfired on me as there were three strong signals already on channel 1.  Checking the wireless utility (Site Monitor tab) I was able to see what channel those other networks were using and switched to channel 11 based on what I saw.  Since then I almost never lose connection.

I'm not sure how to change it in Ubuntu, but another common cause is the power management settings.  I'm assuming thats something you've already looked into based on your original post, however.

Steve, that does sound like it could be a hardware problem since it happened with both operating systems.  Have you already tried reseating the wireless card?  It is accessable via the (one) door on the bottom of the mini.  Just power down the computer, remove the battery, open the door and then remove and reinstall the wireless card, making sure it is firmly connected in the slot.  The full instructions, with pictures, are available in the service manual for the Mini.

Larry,

   Thanks for the quick response!  No I haven't tried that yet (re-seating the wireless card) and I haven't exhausted some of the other things to try in the these posts (like changing channels, etc.).  By the way, do you know what driver I should be using?  It looks like Windows is using the Broadcom driver but there was also an Atheros driver available on the support Web page for my service tag number.

Thanks!

  -Steve

I'm having a similar problem. I can connect just fine to my wireless network, but when I am using wireless some web sites work and some don't. For example, I can get into Google just fine, but I can't get into e-bay.  It connects to the e-bay page and then just sits forever "Waiting for www.ebay.com".

My other computers hooked to the wireless work just fine (they are XP), and the wired connection works just fine.

I'm a bit concerned because apparently Dell does not support ubuntu anymore. I've called all the numbers, but I get a recorded message that it is no longer supported.

Can anyone help me?