Well, I must say I'm a little disappointed that I received not a response of help on here. Way to go, Dell. Really feeling the "support."

I love how a one-sentence problem posted just a few days later got over a hundred replies. Maybe next time I won't bother giving any details and just say "my wifi isnt working help me plzzz??"

Anyway, enough passive aggression. For anyone who falls upon this post with the same problem, here's how I fixed it:

I popped open the computer because I was pretty sure it was a hardware problem, and sure enough there was a coat of dust on my ethernet card and the gold connection strips seemed dull and not making proper connection. I carefully removed the card and cleaned it off, replacing it. I also made sure that my antenna that came with the computer were fully plugged in (believe me, this tower can't pick up wifi at all without them, so make sure the antenna are in!)

A few restarts later and it was up and running again.