Wireless A but Nothing on G

Question

Hello guys, I hope you can help on this case.   I am using an Inspiron 8200 latest Bios, Mini PC Card 1450 with latest drivers. Router is Linksys WRT55AG ver1.   Problem: (only when connected to G signal)  I am getting excelent wireless connection, associated, but no interntet, I am not able to ping the router when I choose 802.11 G. I need G because of the range.   When I use my wired connection or 802.11 A, on the same laptop, there is no problem with internet or rest of the network. So IP and setup should be no problem since it is the same card only connectong to my other type of signal.   Static IP on everything, I disabled WEP, Windows firewall, Norton, and for a while I disabled Windows wireless service but eventually activated it again. When I activated the XP wireless service, and used a firmware beta sent by Linksys I got internet for a few seconds then it dropped. Never came back.   I played with thresholds, channels, SSIDs, Cloning MAC addresses.   I have windows XP Prof. SP2 with all updates installed.   Thanks in advance for your coments.

Jerry Park · Answer

I have an Inspiron 8200. It doesn't have an 802.11a range antenna. I wonder how you are connecting to an 802.11a AP.

Sounds like you are not receiving a correct IP address or perhaps don't have the correct gateway.

Run ipconfig /all (CMD window) with your wired connection.

Then switch to the 802.11g signal and run ipconfig /all. You should have an IP in the same range as on the wired connection and should have the same gateway. If you have a 169.x.x.x IP, try repairing the connection.

mercatodo · Answer

My wireless PCMCIA is 1450 a/b/g that does any signal.   The IP thing should not be it since the card itself is the same and you only change the type of signal. You can not do an IP for G and another for A with the same card.   I tried what you told me but I am not able to ping the router on G, therefore it does not give me an IP. I get excellent signal but no communication.   Thanks, I will answer any questions, I have been playing with this for months.

Jerry Park · Answer

You've lost me. Your first post mentioned that you were using a 1450 mini-pci card (which in an Inspiron 8200, shouldn't have an antenna for 802.11a), but your second post seems to indicate you are using a cardbus or PCMCIA card.

In any event, if you are connecting on the 802.11a band but can't connect on the 802.l1g band, try turning off the 802.11a band in the router and or in the settings for the card. If that doesn't work, I'd try uninstalling the device, rebooting, then reinstalling it.

CraigSRoss · Answer

Mercatodo, your situation sounds identical to what I ran into. I have also been trying to get a new Dell Wireless WLAN 1450 Dual Band WLAN Mini-PCI Card (Dell Part #430-0962) to work on my Inspiron 8200 and I finally found the answer in older in posts in this forum. Thanks to those that posted this solution earlier! And for those of us that got stuck buying this card from Dell, here's the only solution that worked for me, I can offer no guarantee this procedure will work for others.

My problem: The 1450 would connect to my wireless network but it would report a very low or poor signal strength. I could get a very good to excellent signal strength from the same location with a PCMCIA wireless network adapter, so all signs pointed to the 1450.

Inspiron 8200 & 1850 mini-pci details: Forget what Dell may tell you, the i8200 does not support wireless "A" networks via the mini-pci card, so you wasted your money paying extra for "A" on the 1450. The reason is that there is only one antenna wire in the i8200 and that supports "B/G". When you install the 1450 mini-pci card, be sure that you connect this antenna wire to the "MAIN" connector. The 1450's "AUX" connector would ordinarily allow "A" networking if the i8200 had a second antenna wire, but it doesn't. Other posts I've seen here make it sound very difficult to add a second antenna wire. So if you really need wireless "A" I would suggest you start looking for a PCMCIA or USB network adapter because the 1450 is not going to do it for you. The good news is you really CAN get wireless "G" to work very nicely on the i8200 but it requires you to download the latest drivers and you must also manually intervene during the driver installation.

Download the latest drivers: The R94827 drivers worked for me and I'll use it as an example in these instructions. R94827 is version 3.100.35.1 and has a release date of 3/15/2005 so it's seems very current. You can download it at http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=R94827&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19. Other versions of 1450 drivers may also work with this same procedure. Follow the instructions to download and start installing the drivers. The installation should extract the driver installation files, run setup.exe, but then fail to detect the 1450 hardware, but if setup does not fail just cancel the installation after you extract the files..

Manual intervention: I get the drivers installed you must first manually modify the setup.ini file that was extracted from the drivers file you downloaded, it should be in the C:\DELL\Drivers\R94827 directory. Open setup.ini file with Notepad, scroll down to the very bottom, and make the following changes:

Delete the lines starting with "DEVICE1=" and "DEVICE2=".
Rename "DEVICE3" to "DEVICE1"
Delete "&SUBSYS" and everything after it on both of the remaining "DEVICE" lines.
Save the file and Exit Notepad.
Rerun setup.exe, in the C:\DELL\Drivers\R94827 directory.

Setup.exe should now detect the 1450 card and successfully install a functional set of drivers. After performing this procedure my 1450 gets very good to excellent wireless "G" signal strength. The older messages posted here mentioned that this procedure would also works for the 1300 and 1350 mini-pci cards.

There is one other issue specific to Windows XP Service Pack 2 that I also ran into that you may encounter. You must let Windows configure your wireless network settings. XP SP 2 will try to control the wireless network settings and it will conflict with the Dell Wireless WLAN Card Utility. So if you continue to have problems, check the options on the Wireless Networks tab of the properties in the Dell Card Utility program and the 1450 card listed in Network Connections, and see which manages the wireless network.

I hope this helps. Good Luck!

Inspiron 8200

Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

Dell Wireless WLAN 1450 Dual Band WLAN Mini-PCI Card (Dell Part #430-0962)

Linksys Wireless-G with SpeedBooster router and pcmcia card (but I doubt network hardware brand matters much).

mercatodo · Answer

I re-installed the card as you told me and the problem is sitll there. Excellent signal but no communication.

I did change the chanel on the router and got communication for a minute or so then lost communication again.

Can it be interference from my cordless phone? 2.4 Ghz

Thanks for your help.

CraigSRoss · Answer

I doubt your cordless phone would be the problem.  I have 2.4GHz phones and they've never caused a problem.  I suspect you have a conflict in who is actually controlling the card - Windows Wireless Setup or Dell's Wireless WLAN Utility.  Check all of the options for these two utilities and make sure Windows is the only one controlling the wireless card's settings.

mercatodo · Answer

Well, I checked the box for windows to manage my wireless connections, tue two top boxes on the Dell wireless manager are unchecked and the radio signal is displayed. Can you confirm that this is ok?

On my tray at the bottom of the screen I see the 4 full green lines for the excellent signal. It says excellent signal, not associated.

The only way I get association is if this program (Dell wirless manager or whatever the name is) manages the wireless signals but the communication result is the same.

Thanks again for your time. By the way I have used the card on airports and other installations without any problems, I used T-Mobile and others last week at Las Vegas Airport however I do not know if they were A, B or G signal.

Thanks

CraigSRoss · Answer

I have slightly different settings in my Dell Wireless WLAN Card Utility, for the first 2 options, 'Let this tool manage your wireless settings' is unchecked, and 'Enable Radio' is checked.  I have also unchecked the 'Show wireless icon in systray' option at the bottom of the window. I don't know about the 'not associated' stuff.  My Dell utility program says status is not associated but I'm still working fine wirelessly.

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

Wireless A but Nothing on G

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