Dell Wireless 1540 - slow and inconsistent

Hi FSS18

I was glad to see your post with most basic troubleshooting already performed. There is more under the hood, but before we tweak any further setting for your Wireless card we would need to make sure we understand your Wireless Card well.

Dell(TM)
Wireless WLAN Card User Guide
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/network/s145658/en/props.htm

In the above linked User guide you would find (Default) next to an optimal setting. Few setting that we can change to improved wireless Network performance would be;

Bluetooth Collaboration  - Disable (This is not concerned with the Bluetooth Adapter)
Minimum Power Consumption - Disabled
Power Save Mode - Disabled
Roam Tendency - Aggressive
XPress Technology - Enabled (This feature only works if support by the Wireless Card, let it be the last option to change)

Hope this helps.

Please try these tweaks and let us if this addressed your concerns.

Thanks and
Regards,
Dell_Chandrakant_Halarnekar
Dell Social Media Responder
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Hi Chandrakant

Thank you for your reply

I managed to find the solution to my problem  by :

1. Uninstall the wireless driver completely from the machine

2. Turn off the laptop

3. Turn off the wireless router

4. Turn on the wireless router

5. Start the laptop again

6. Re-run the driver installer taken from dell website

7. viola - now I get it to perform up to its maximum speed on 802.11g

I have a look into the link that you attached previously, thank you , certainly will give a try to tweak it out

Now I am happy with my new machine and start to migrating documents !

Thanks again

I was also having dismal performance with the Dell 1540 Wireless card until I disabled all the bands I could that I am not using in my house/business.   My router is has 802.11n capabilities.   With A/B/G/N all enabled I could only get about 5MBps transferring files wirelessly .on a gigabit backbone.

I disabled B/G and had already applied the other settings mentioned above.   Now I am getting 17-19MBps.

There really does need to be better "optimization" documentation for Dell business systems.   You may assume all IT people should know the ins and outs of some of these settings but with so many vendors out there and so many settings, it's difficult to know which settings should be changed on which cards.   I would love it if wireless would truly get to the "auto-negotiation" level of a wired network.   If you don't see A/B/G as part of the connected access point, turn it off... or at least pop up a message asking the user if it should be turned off and why you're asking.

BraunJPB

Thanks for your reply, I got a new laptop again this year and similar issue happening again, so far I got no luck since I didn't have password for my ATT router (yet)

You have valid argument in here, since I noticed in my Dell wireless manager how the card keep jumping around from one frequency to another.

I am planning to call ATT to get my router password when I am back from vacation and try your trick again, thanks !