e1405/1390 hotel connection problem

Question

Hi,   I have an e1405 with a 1390 wireless card.  When I got the laptop 6 months ago I was having slowness issues and after some extensive Googling found some others having this problem if they were using WPA encryption.   I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router on latest revision.  I changed it to WPA2 and it's worked great since.  This weekend I was staying at a hotel and was having an odd behavior where I could connect to the hotel's wireless and get an IP but could not get on the internet.  I could connect to the coffee shop next door's wireless from my room and that worked fine except the signal was low so it was really slow.  Both of these are unencrypted.  If i disabled/enabled my wireless a bunch of times it would finally work.   I thought it was the hotel so I called the front desk and the girl said her laptop was working fine and my Nintendo DS with built in WiFi connected right away.  I ran a wireless diagnostic and saw the memory test failed so I looked it up and that said that happens if the wireless driver and utility are different versions.   http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&docid=06DF448D9F6D60A8E0401E0A55172682&journalid=21033B2B9E9F11DB8A907FCDAF8E98B6&l=en&s=gen#1    I downloaded the latest driver off Dell's site, rebooted and ran the diag and it did not show failed but still had problems connecting.  Later, I ran diagnostic and it showed failed again.    I'm home now and wireless works great but still shows failed on the memory.   Anyone else run into a problem like this?  Wondering if my wireless card is going bad?  I would think it would either work or not work but maybe not? Message Edited by Texas Pete on 01-07-200704:36 PM

TonysPC · Answer

Hi   I am certainly experiencing the slowness problem and sometimes I get the memory failed error in the diagnostics - but not always.   I only got the Inspiron 1501 last Friday and it connected straight away to my network but is painfully slow. I am at work at the moment but when I get home I am going to try your idea of changing to WPA2 to see if that solves it.   If I use a USB wireless adapter instead of the internal wireless card I get excellant speeds.   My router is a Netgear DG834GT and I have also tried a Speedtouch 580 and get the same results with both.   I tried the online support and they were of no help at all - they made me run the diagnostics again whilst online and of course it disconnected me - how can you get back to the person you were chatting with? I didn't want to go back to square one again so I gave up.   If your fix works I will be extremely grateful.   Tony

TonysPC · Answer

It worked!   I had to use WEP because my router doesn't offer WPA2 as an option so my security is not what I would wish.   However, wireless access speed is now normal and the internet flies, like it does on my other PC.   I have emailed Dell to suggest that there might be a bug in their driver software.   Tony

Texas Pete · Answer

Yes, I did the same thing, emailed Dell, never got a response.   I wish someone from Dell would reply to this thread, I'd really rather not call.   I changed my network to WEP too since then because my Nintendo DS only recognizes WEP.

Texas Pete · Answer

I emailed Dell again and told them my problem. They sent me a new 1390 wireless card. I ran the wireless diag, showed memory failed, replaced the card, ran test again and it passes now. I'm not quite sure what the memory on the wireless card does. It worked fine most of the time but was a little flaky sometimes.

I would say if you get a memory failed then upgrade to latest drivers first. There is an article in their knowledgebase saying if driver and software are on different versions it will show memory failed. If that doesn't work then call them.

Message Edited by Texas Pete on 01-31-2007 07:57 AM

Message Edited by Texas Pete on 01-31-2007 07:57 AM

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

e1405/1390 hotel connection problem

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