Hi,

I would recommend things like checking the antenna leads in the system to make sure they are firmly connected to the wireless card, check the card itself to see if it's fully seated, try turning off bluetooth to see if that improves speeds, and try turning off your security software and settings on both the router and the laptop to see if speeds improves. (could be a conflict between the driver settings and router security protocols.)  Make sure to turn the security settings back on afterwards.

It could be that the card itself needs to be upgraded to a newer model to work well with your router.  Different chipsets from different wireless card manufacturers work differently, and perform differently, in different environments.  

Here is a link to our support pages, where if you input the service tag of your system you'll be redirected to the pages specific to your model.  There you will find user and support manuals that will show you how to check the antenna leads, etc.   You don't mention which specific model of the 17r you're using but that can be found on those pages as well.  You might want to take a look at where the antennas run on that system and make sure (especially if they're up through the LCD screen) that the antennas haven't been crimped.

Let us know what you find out.  To better assist me in troubleshooting please click on my Dell Todd username and send me a private message just with your Dell Service Tag.  Comments and questions, please continue to post them in this thread so others can see what steps we take to (hopefully) resolve the speed question.

Todd

Hello Todd, et al,

Can you assist in locating the Diagnostic Utility download page for the DW1501 Half-Mini Card?

I had no difficulties locating the web page explaining how to use it, but I am unable to locate the actual download.  I did use the Service Tag for the specific laptop, but no "Diagnostic" or "Utility" download is listed there for use with Microsoft Windows 7, 64-bit.

See also:
http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN285363/EN

Hello Todd, et al, Can you assist in locating the Diagnostic Utility download page for the DW1501 Half-Mini Card? I had no difficulties locating the web page explaining how to use it, but I am unable to locate the actual download.  I did use the Service Tag for the specific laptop, but no "Diagnostic" or "Utility" download is listed there for use with Microsoft Windows 7, 64-bit. See also:

Hi,

The utility is part of the driver, so when you download, and install, the driver it should also install the utility application.

NOTE: DW (Dell Wireless) WLAN Card Utility is a part of the drivers for the Dell Wireless series of Wireless Network Adapters. (DW1501 etc.

I hope this helps,

Todd

Hi knute97,

You mentioned in your message that you ran the diagnostics and it passed.  Did you get a chance to check the antenna leads and wires?

Todd

Hi Todd,

No, I haven't checked the antenna as yet.  From what I can see, it's not an external antenna and I will have to go into the case.

I did, however, temporarily stop the McAfee virus protection and still got slow wireless speeds 3.65/2.79 Mb/s.

Then I also disabled the router firewall and got similar results 3.01/2.43 Mb/s with both disabled.

For W7, I couldn't find a Bluetooth adapter to disable so I removed the dongle for my mouse as that is the only Bluetooth device that I use on the laptop.  Speeds still slow.

BTW, I recently tried to find an upgraded wireless card with the same form factor, but really did not see anything that could convince me of a newer/better product.  My component list for the laptop also doesn't show an upgraded card.  Doesn't seem to be like buying memory where vendors list compatible products with specifications.

BTW, I recently tried to find an upgraded wireless card with the same form factor, but really did not see anything that could convince me of a newer/better product.

Hello,

If a different card, and thus different chipset, are getting similar results in the system that does seem to lead towards either an issue with the antennas or environmental issues that are affecting the signal.  If you don't feel comfortable with opening the case you could take it to a repair center and have someone there do it for you.  Or, if you have access to one, you can try and external USB wireless card and see if that produces better results.

BTW, I meant to ask.   Is this the speeds that you've always seen or is the slower speeds something that either happened over time or suddenly?

Todd

Hi Todd,

I really don’t know if my wireless speeds have deteriorated over time.

What I do know, is that I installed a new Belkin router at the end of 2014 and, only recently, when I looked at my Speedtest history, did I note that my wired speeds had dropped from the 20/4 Mb/s speeds to 9/2 Mb/s.

Belkin support suggested that I reflash the firmware and restore the router to its’ factory resets. This restored the speeds to the 20/4 Mb/s.

However, since I utilized MAC filtering for my network, I saved the old configuration (only difference in config that I can see is that all the MAC address were saved), but when I restored this saved configuration, the speeds dropped immediately.

I did another factory reset and entered the MAC addresses manually and now my wired speeds have been steady at 20/4 Mb/s.

So, I am not sure that the wireless speed drop could be  related to the router, but I will be traveling in 2 weeks and connecting to different routers. I will run speed tests to see if the router is the problem and post results.

In the meantime, I will check my antenna.