Very Poor Wireless Performance on new Dell Mini 10

Question

Hi all - first time posting but long time Dell owner.

Yesterday I received a brand new Mini 10 (model 1010). Out of the box, the wireless performance is really, really poor.

I have two Dell laptops, a Dell desktop, and an Acer netbook. All of those systems connect to my WEP-enabled wireless network and receive between "Very Good" and "Excellent" signal strength at 54 mbps throughout my entire property.

From the same locations, the Mini 10 receives "Very Low" to "Low" at rates as low as 1 or 2 mbps. This is regardless of what Advanced driver settings I tweak for the wireless card driver. Even within close proximity of the wireless router, the Mini 10 gets at best "Good" signal strength and almost never sustains 54 mbps.

I have a Belkin Pre-N router that is working without any issue for all other wireless devices in my home. The internal diagnostics of the Mini 10 wireless card all pass.

Any ideas if I have a hardware issue on my hands, or could this be driver-related? Would hate to send the unit back to Dell but I'm getting really close to that because the system simply isn't usable with the current WiFi issue.

Thanks!!

-Joe

sephage · Accepted Answer

Update: The folks at Dell Wireless were able to fix it.

What worked was going into the Advanced properties for the network card adapter and setting "Atenna Diversity" to "Aux".

As soon as that was changed, it worked like a charm. My only guess is that it somehow engages the wireless card's antenna?

PudgyOne · Answer

Joe,   You sound like you know what you're looking for, then try this and see if it helps.     Rick

sephage · Answer

Thanks - no dice.   Should I send this thing back?

PudgyOne · Answer

Joe,   New out of the box, I try Dell's online tech support and have them take control of it and try it.     Rick

PudgyOne · Answer

Joe,

Alright, glad you got it working!:emotion-21: I will make a note of this. If you could mark the verified answer on your own post so if others search the forums, they can see what you did to correct the problem.

Thanks,

Rick

nkenagy · Answer

Can someone give more detail here. How would you check and change this parameter on a Mini 10V with Ubuntu? Thanks in advance for any help.

MidnightSwinga · Answer

Can someone give more detail here. How would you check and change this parameter on a Mini 10V with Ubuntu? Thanks in advance for any help.

I'm having this same issue of horrible WiFi performance out of the box.

Running Jolicloud which is a version of Ubuntu, how would I go about changing this setting?

Thanks for any help!

nkenagy · Answer

I didn't go back and close this out. I found that it came from the factory with the antenna not connected. After opening up the bottom and securely fastening the antenna, the performance is similar to other laptops I use. Verify that all of the physical connections are tight. It worked in the room with the wireless router with the antenna loose, but wouldn't receive as I moved further away.

cjclifton · Answer

Thank you sooooooo much for this solution! I have been having the same issue since November 2009 (it's now August 2010) with terrible wireless reception and chatted with tech support twice to no avail and this simple 5 second solution fixed all of my problems myself! Can't thank you enough!

Why don't the support people I chatted with know this??????

Doobster · Answer

Did you ever get this resolved?  I have a similiar issue where I cannot get a valid IP address on wireless....

PudgyOne · Answer

Doobster,   Did you try the verified answer?   Start, control panel, device manager, network, your adapter, advanced. Make sure the Antenna Diversity is changed from Auto to Aux.     Rick

Doobster · Answer

Yes I did.  It made no difference.  I have several laptops, all Dell, and they all work fine on wireless.  I see tons of issue related to this when I do a google search but no resolution, well other than with Ubuntu as the OS and I have XP.  I work in the IT field and am pretty familiar with TCP\IP settings. I have tried multiple setting changes.  I even hard coded valid IP\DNS settings and that did not work.  I would reinstall the TCP\IP stack but that option is greyed out....  This basically make a netbook useless. I downloaded and installed the wireless drivers from Dell's support page after a recent reinstall of the OS.

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

Very Poor Wireless Performance on new Dell Mini 10

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