Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card / problems connecting to WPA-PSK protected network

My money is on the fact that WPA2 is not REQUIRED to be backward compatible and some of them do NOT add that capability which the Broadcom did not according to the specs even though the driver has it in the drop down menu, I have had that issue before with certain wireless cards and common drivers. The other units support WPA2-PSK or AES so why not go the more secure route. Depending on warranty  you could swap the cards between 2 units and try it, that would isolate the card or the Windows load itself. The other option is to try an external USB or PCMCIA adapter if you have a friend that has one that support WPA and WPA2..

My wife has a Mini 1011 with a 1397 card.

My daughter has a Studio 1537 with a 1397 card

I broadcast my SSID(Change this if you changing settings to make it easier to connect.

I use WPA-PSK(TKIP) Security (Personal)

I use mixed mode and broadcast on channel 11.

I have no problems with them connecting. My password is 12 digits long.

Rick

I cannot Connect to my wireless internet (Linksys WRT100) Everytime it says there is a problem at my access point. I am not sure how i can fix this problem. I contacted Dell in 2 ways, the first was through a Chat, that was not helpful, 2nd I talked to someone over the phone ( Dell Support) and all they wanted to do was sell me an extended Warrenty when i still have 150 days remaining on mine now. So if anyone knows anything about this problem it would be extremely helpful!!!

We need a little more info to help you, what encryption are you using, what model Dell and wireless card etc. to best identify the issue.

The first place to look is the wireless settings in Windows, are you using encryption? If so does it connect when the encryption is turned off on the router? I have had issues with the 1397 cards mangling the key which required re-adding the network. Also check for upgrades to the firmware as that is also a culprit. Lime waire doesn't do anything to the connection except proxy if needed for an outbound connection.:emotion-1:

DADaniels,

Try running Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

Limewire probably has your winsock messed up. Will take a couple of times before it gets straightened out. Try running WinSock XP Fix

Rick

Ok, I'll be posting this solution across the many threads dealing with the WPA-PSK issue and the Dell 1395 Wireless WLAN Mini-card not working with it. I had the same issue as everyone has experienced. Using the Dell provided 1395 WLAN drivers (Version A17, 4.170.25.12), the WLAN Mini-card will connect perfectly via WEP or non-encryption settings with the router. However, once you go to WPA-PSK (the preferred setting), it doesn't work. It's that simple, it just is incompatible with WPA-PSK, period.

After a TON of searching, I found a thread somewhere that indicated that the Dell 1395 card is really the Broadcom 4310 card, so I did a search for the Broadcome 4310 and came across a driver provided at Hewlett-packard's site. The filename is "sp36684.exe", type that into google and you can download it straight from HP.

I downloaded it, extracted it to a directory, and then:

1. Go to device manager & right-click on the Dell Wireless 1395 card and choose "Update Driver"

2. Click "No, Not this time", then "Install from specific location"

3. Choose "Don't search, I will choose the driver to install"

4. Click "Have Disk"

5. Browse for the directory you extracted the "sp36684.exe" file to

6. Choose the "Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN" card

7. Click "Yes" on the warning to let it install

Voila! It now supports WPA-PSK (as well as giving the option for WPA2-PSK, although my router only supports WPA-PSK so that's all I could test). You won't be able to use the Dell Wireless Utility to configure the card anymore, you'll have to use Windows to configure the wireless network settings. A small price to pay for the added security of WPA-PSK

Hope this helps, go figure, the solution was found at the HP site... Post a comment back if this works for you so that the Dell tech's can see that it's a common problem (and solution) and maybe provide an updated (or in this case, an older version of the driver, because you WILL be using an older driver version) driver to get the WPA-PSK to work for that card.

Thank you for a most comprehensive reply and possible solution, it almost solved my problem till i noticed that everyone else here is talking about problems with the 1397 card and you seem to have found a fix for the 1395, unless that is a typo or you're in the wrong forum OR i'm an idiot and they're the same thing? I'm not the most technically capable person in the world so ignore me if i am talking jibberish. Also you failed to mention what OS you did all this on, i found the update you claimed fixed all your problems and it's labled XP and below. I run Win7, will/should that make any difference, i'm assuming so.

If the Dell people could get onto this problem i would really appreciate it. I didn't pay for a laptop to be denied it's use.

Sorry about that. Yes, my fix worked for my 1395 card on Windows XP SP3 (w/ all latest updates via windowsupdate.com).

Given that all it took was for me to install a new driver, that indicates that the hardware more than likely supports WPA-PSK and that all of these issues really boil down to a Dell driver issue. I read a different post around here indicating that the guy thought the problem was that the Dell driver and/or utility allows you to select WPA-PSK from the drop-down, but it defaults to "AES" encryption scheme instead of "TKIP" which is what most routers/people use. So if Dell can fix their drivers to allow that differentiation, that MAY fix everyone's issues across all drivers & versions of their wireless card. Because when I use the older driver version via the HP site, it gives the drop-down list and lets me specifically choose "TKIP" and then enter the key and everything is fine, so it's 100% a driver issue, period. I can't imagine it's any different for 1397 or Win7 or anything like that, but I may be wrong.

The 1397 may be a Broadcom 4312 card, so you can try going to google and doing a "broadcom 4312 driver windows 7" search and experiment with any drivers that you find using the same technique I described above (clicking the "Have Disk", yada yada). Although I haven't used Win7 yet so I'm not sure of the exact steps you need to take to point it directly to whatever experimental driver you download, I'm sure you folks can figure it out though if you're smart enough to look here in the first place.

So give it a shot with various non-Dell drivers (which I'm sure Dell does not condone or support) and post back if you get it to work. Like I said, I'm sure it's a driver issue if it connects with no encryption or WEP, but not WPA-PSK. Get a driver that lets you choose WPA-PSK with TKIP specifically and it may work. Good luck and let us know what you find!

Hey Guys,

I think I may have found a solution.  I was having the exact same issue as everyone else and spent days trying to figure out what could be wrong.  My adapter actually worked on another router and then after I moved and was using my own linksys router, every computer in my home except for this Dell would  connect to it.  I went through all the steps here and even a few more of my own and was told by Dell support that everything I tried is exactly what they would have done and that they had no other explanation for me other than that it was most likely a software issue that would require a $100-200 fee to troubleshoot.

Anyway...after a bunch of stress and frustration, I found that the laptop had saved the authentication data from the previous connection and that it wasn't allowing it to connect because the new settings did not match the old ones.  I could connect if there wasn't any type of security at all, but any form of encryption enabled would not let me connect.  So, here is how I solved the issue:

Open the available networks

Find the SSID of your wireless network

R-click the SSID and select properties

Change the settings on the security tab so that they match exactly what you have entered into the wireless router

click OK and try to connect

After these simple steps, I was able to connect to the Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card with any type of encryption I chose as long as it matches under the properties of the SSID with the configs on the wireless router.

Took a little bit of sifting but it is not the type of authentication it is the authentication method. The router I have has open system, shared key, wpa personal, ect. Well The issue was that WEP 64 while selecting shared key was correct on the router, however to set this up I disabled authentication and connected to the router. Then I re-enabled the security. In this example WEP-64bit Shared key. then select manage wireless networks, right click on the new network, select properties, select the security tab, and match the security type(Shared Key in this example), type of encryption (WEP in this example), KEY(whatever key is hashed by the pass phrase entered on the router) and MAKE SURE THE KEY INDEX is set the the correct key. In the Example of WEP you have 4 keys now if you are entering key one in the client and are transmitting key 4 on the router, well the client will tell you it is the wrong key because it is.

The issue here is that the auto detect of Windows 7 makes us config lazy. When the auto detect fails we have to dig for the settings. The config works great if the security method does not prevent it from working. Short story. Open the router and configure the client to connect, then re-secure the router and use the above method to set the proper settings that the router provided. All works as it should.

Make sure to enable 802.11b on your router for wireless mode, better if you enable 802.11b+802.11g+802.11n