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50791
Studio XPS 8100 Wifi Not Recognizing Connections
Hello, I recently moved to college with my Dell Studio XPS 8100. The school offers wifi, which I can connect to just fine on my laptop, phone devices, and even gaming devices. However, my tower computer in the exact same location cannot seem to even register that wifi connections exist.
While the school's wifi does seem to use some kind of proxy, I can locate and connect to it just fine on my Inspiron Dell Laptop positioned in the same place as my tower, so I do not believe it to be an issue with the school's routers or wifi connection. There are also other nearby connections (my roommate's printer, a neighbor's wifi) that are independent of the school that are also not being picked up by my computer. It just has a red X over the wifi symbol and says no connections are available.
While at home I had no problems and the device has not changed since then. I do not think there is an external wifi switch, so I don't think I bumped anything during the move. (But if I am mistaken, please let me know.)
As far as I can tell, I checked device manager, all the drivers seem to be enabled and functioning. I attempted a System Restore to last week to see if an update perhaps changed something, but it had no effect. I also went to the Dell Drivers & Downloads and downloaded+installed the latest network driver (Atheros Wireless 1525 WLAN Mini Card Desktops, v.8.0.0.376, A02) that was available for my model. This also did not help.
System Info:
Network Card(s): 3 NIC(s) Installed.
[01]: Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet
Connection Name: Local Area Connection
Status: Media disconnected
[02]: DW1525 (802.11n) WLAN PCIe Card
Connection Name: Wireless Network Connection
Status: Media disconnected
[03]: Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter
Connection Name: Wireless Network Connection 2
Status: Media disconnected
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, a computer without wifi does me no good so I'm banging my head on the wall trying to figure this one out.
phillipsmc2
2 Posts
1
August 27th, 2013 13:00
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.