Inspiron e1505 Wireless Networks not Found

 darnoconrad,

You said...

Today I formatted, installed the drivers, and still the card is detected but cannot find any networks

Did you install the desktop/notebook system utility and the chipset drivers first? If not, the rest of the drivers will fail to install. How to Download and Install Drivers in the Correct Order

You can start with the desktop/notebook system utility and the chipset drivers and install the rest in order and everything should start working.

Rick

Thank you for your quick reply.

I did exactly that.  After having installed the system utility plus the chipset drivers. I installed the original wireless network card drivers that came on the cd. It' still could not find any networks. I did a complete Windows Vista Home Premium update, installed newer drivers for the Wifi. It still gives me the exact same problem.

- A format with clean driver installation did not fix the problem

- After doing the compelte Vista update, I tried again to install the utility/chipset/wifi driver... Still not working.

- Purchasing a new Wifi Card did not fix the problem.

- Windows still detects the card in the system just no networks are found(my other computers can find the wireless networks)

- The only thing I have not tried is putting my Wifi card into someone else's computer; but I don't know anyone else that has a dell laptop.

What else could it be? 

I forgot to mention that I also purchased a USB Wifi card. It works perfectly.

When pressing the "Diagnose why Windows can't find any networks"

the answer is "Turn on wireless capability" 

- this was the same when installing the brand new wifi card.

You do not have to format or reinstall the drivers.

If you install Dell wireless card along with that the wireless utility of dell is also installed on the computer. The name of the utility may be (Dell wireless utility or Intel Proset wireless utility)

However, Windows itself has a built in wireless utility called

WLAN: for Windows Vista/7

WZC: for Windows XP

Now these two utilities conflict each other and do not allow you to connnect to any network.

To resolve this problem.

We need to either uninstall the third party wireless utility.

OR

Open the third party utility and check the option that says "Allow windows to manage my wireless network." or the option may also say "Let this tool manage

your wireless network" so we need to uncheck that.

My computer does not have a Wireless Dell Utility installed. It only has the windows Utility installed. I looked around for it anyway and could not find one.

- One interesting point that I'll make is that when in network connections, it shows Wireless Network Connection with a big red "X" across it.  With the option to right click and choose disable (I disabled then enabled a bunch of times hoping this would fix it... it didn't)

- Then go to Control Panel/ Windows Mobility Center - and in it it says "Wireless Off" (if i disable Wireless Network Connection... the wireless portion in Windows Mobility Center will completely disappear)

- When I plug in the USB Wifi, Wireless Network Connection 2 pops up, and immediately finds networks. Also, in Windows Mobility Center, the Wireless section with change to "not connected" and a button appears to go to "network center"

I don't know if that means anything but I thought I might point it out. Please keep in mind I get the exact same results when inserting the new Wifi Card I bought.

I am wondering if possibly there is an antenna built into the computer that is independent from the wifi card and that is possible malfunctioning? Therefore the wifi is not able to pick anything up? Or it's possibly the mobo? Before formatting I did update the firmware to see if that would help.

 darnoconrad,

Restart your computer and press F2 at the Dell screen Enter the BIOS and make sure the wireless adapter is enabled there.

Go to device manager, network, your network adapter. Make sure it's enabled there.

Go to control panel, windows mobility center. Make sure it's turned on there.

Make sure to check the network connection properties

and make sure that DHCP is enabled, both TCP/IPv6 and TCP/IPv4, then click properties

Try reading...

Windows Vista cannot obtain an IP address from certain routers or from certain non-Microsoft DHCP servers

How to start Wireless Zero Configuration using Vista/Windows 7

Winsock2 How to determine and to recover from Winsock2 corruption in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, and in Windows Vista

Rick

 darnoconrad,

Glad you got it working! :emotion-21: Thanks for posting back.

Take care,

Rick

This is embarrassing.

After Formatting/playing with drivers/ getting a new card...

It turns out that my mom pressed the FN key with the wireless symbol on it... it works again!

Thanks for all your help guys!