Wireless does not connect

Is MAC address filtering enabled on the router?  If so, have you added the MAC address of the wireless card to the table of allowed MAC addresses on the router? 

Steve

No, MAC adress filtering is off.  

BTW, I also tried rebooting the router.

All new Dell machines come with either Norton Internet Security or McAfee Security suite.  Have you checked to see if the firewall included in these packages is somehow blocking the connection?  It seems unlikely, since you can connect at a hotspot.  In fact, if it can connect at a hotspot but not to your own network, it points to a problem with your router.  You said you rebooted the router.  Does this mean you just turned it off and then back on or did you try resetting it to its factory settings using the reset button on the router?

Steve

When I tried the hotspot I had not yet started Norton. On the previuos try at home only the

XP wirewall was on. Later yesterday I started Norton since it kept bugging me.  I will try without any firewall, will have to rely on the router firewall to keep me from harm.

Problem with the router seems unlikely since two other machines have no problems.

So far I only unplugged the router. I will try reset.

 Tanks for the suggestions

 

I'm having a nearly identical problem. In my case it's a Latitude C840 with a Truemobile 1150 . . . No problem connecting to a Netgear or Belkin WAP, but with a Linksys b/g WAP (WRT54GL), the network is detected, MAX signal strength is indicated, but it won't connect.
Tried it with no security at all (temporarily, naturally!), MAC filtering (checked & rechecked MAC addresses), and WEP . . . nothing.

Anyone else seen this happen?

I am having the same problem with my E1705 that arrived today. I uninstalled Norton, disabled all firewall, etc. took off all security systems for router -- to no avail. My other laptop connects fine to WLAN no matter what I change on the router settings, so I don't think the router is the problem. This is really frustrating, as the reason I forked out the money for the laptop was to use the wireless capability.

It does connect fine to the same router when using the ethernet cable.

Any ideas?

Same here, switching off the firewall made no difference. Ditto with resetting the router.

I just talked with Verizon DSL tech support. She did not know about any incompatibility between some wireless cards and routers.I am fresh out of ideas.

Hi,

I also encountered wireless connection problem when I got my 9400 which is same as E1705. I struggled for a night, and got it resolved in the second night.

It seems all point to the SSID case sensitive problem -- normally window system don't care about case of a letter. However, the newer system and drivers do treat uppper case and lower case differently as they should in the Unix/the other side of the window world.

Here is the LONG steps that I try and solved the problem. (you may need to have wire, i.e. ethernet calble connected to setup your router. Also you can try the short step of just match the case of the SSID in the router and your laptop directly)

1. set the SSID to all lower case in the router, and have the SSID enter the same in the profile in the wireless driver in your laptop.

2. disable the encryption key both in the router and the wireless driver, i.e. set it to none.

3. now click connect and you should get connected.

4. once you get connected, you can start to change the encryption key back to 64/128 bit both in the router and the wireless driver (so you have security on), once that is done, click connect and you should get connected.

5. you can improve the security by change SSID to have both uppper and lower case and select the no broadcast option in the router, and change the SSID in the wireless driver to match that of the router setting. click connect and you should get connected.

By the way, normally just power up or down the system/router to try to get around a problem is not a right approach. It only implies the product is buggy/not ready.

Hope it helps.

I was able to resolve my problem...however I do not know what the actual root cause was....

I have a USR8054 router, and I updated the firmware on it. ONce I had done that, it seemed to work fine. In the process of troubleshooting the router went down a few times before I updated the firmware. I don't know if updating it was what fixed the symptoms, but it immediately connected after I did that.

Try updating your router firmware to see if that helps. I doubted it would work for me, but it did.

Good luck!

Tried all lower case SSID. No change. I also could not find any software update for my router.

I downloaded the driver for the Dell wireless minicard. Upon installation I got a message " starting wireless" or something to that effect. Right after that I saw some signs of life in the form of an active signal strenght meter. I never got full connection though. After a couple of minutes the card seemed to be tired again and went to sleep, never waking up again.  I talke to Dell Tech support and they will send me a new Intel wireless card. See, how that goes. Will be out till end of next week.

 

 

I have to get in on this one, as I am having a very similar problem, but with a twist.

I got my laptop 2 weeks ago and it was connecting fine, however, my laptop was running slow.  So I wiped out the drive, reinstalled Windows XP and the drivers.

Here is the twist, it will connect to some networks, and not others...others meening my Verizon DSL wireless.  It will connect just fine with a cable, and will connect through wireless to a Starbucks or an airport wifi, but not my router any more since the re-insall.

I checked all the settings that I can think, including firewalls, channel number, WEP, etc, etc...

Next I am going to physically remove the wireless NIC card, reboot, re-install the NIC card, and reboot again...why?  Because I have no idea what to do anymore.

Dell says it's Verizon, Verizon says it's Dell.  Go figure

ADDITIONAL SYMPTOM


same here, purchased 9400 on 2/12/06, a few days ago, i encrypted the westell router at work for them (new JOB)and now the pc will only connect to that one router, have reinstalled the OS, didn't help, reseated the chip, nada, Dell is sending me a new chipset, but i noted an ADDITIONAL SYMPTOM:

the card refuses to even try to make an attempt to connect, although the windows desktop script runs, showing a transactional attempt, BUT THE SYSTRAY ICON DOES NOT HAVE THE INDICATOR (yellow)BALL FLASHING TO AND FRO.


I thought it might be an update issue with Microsoft, but it definately is not the router, as it connects to some, and not others.

Just prior to this, MY OWN PC was ASSIGNING me an invalid ip, 69?.???..., so I just configured the ip/defalt gateway/dns manually, thinking it was no big deal, but SOMETHINGS REALLY WRONG, and I am not a newbie at this.

should I flash the bios? get a replacement laptop or what? Dell doesn't seem to have a handle on this at all. Yet.

sail2awe,

If you have your TCP/IP properties set to a fixed IP address instead of having it obtain an IP address automatically, then it's no wonder that you cannot connect to any other wireless nework.   It will never work unless you change it back to obtain an IP address automatically.

Steve

Sooo, I got out one of my work disks, and loaded 'rootkitrevealer', from sysinternals, and it found one in the prefetch, hidden away, although I would normally have turned this process off by now had the pc behaved normally.

i would be interested in finding out if anyone else with this issue can reproduce this.

the name of this one would be:

cmd.exe-08784001.pf (in C:\Windows\Prefetch\)

note what this is binding to, being one byte, not that that matters, as rootkits do not alter the file sizes, they only modify the date of whatever file they root into, so, perhaps this is?

Thanks for the feedback. Thinking on what you wrote, I am under the impression that when an illegal address is appropriated, that typing in the static one that is always the norm is the correct proceedure in forcing the proper connection, but maybe I have been doing it wrong all these years, I don't know, anyway, I don't think I stated the issue plainly enough, permit me to try again:


At work, on the icon in the systray, the little yellow ball which shows that an effort is being made to connect by the wireless follows it's normal pattern for a moment, then connects quite rapidly.

At home, there is no little yellow ball showing any effort to make a connection, and there is no effort to connect to anything at all, this with all services set to default even; all the while, the tests show all pass wonderfully, and indicating a positive strong signal (-88 or thereabouts) and recognizing my MAC, so whatever it is, forcing a dns match within the acceptable ip address range within the isp's router paramiters would seem to create the static connect, if only the card would actually make the effort to renew/make any attempt at a connection whatsoever.

Seeing the many threads and posts on failing signals and cards, one of the main symptoms of failure is the lack of receiving an ip from the router, so the pc assigns itself one if it can, usually an incorrect one.


I even experimented with permitting raw sockets, but no change at all.


So I now have a fresh install, yet the problem persists. I have never seen anything like this before. It is that intel pro wireless, which now, I wish I had taken the lesser priced modual from Dell. This has already cost me over 30 hours of trial and effort - to no avail.


I am leaning towards a window thing, or potential design flaw in the OEM version of the OS, if there is one. Having installed thousands of OS's - still I pay attention, but this is very odd indeed, retaining the issue even after a repartition/install. This connection is just a simple stand alone, but what do you think about me creating a file/print sharing resource network, just to change the settings (where ever they really reside), and then tapering it off to what the office environ soon requires anyway? a small lan.

Meanwhile, thinking it could be a bad sector or whatnot, I ran spinright, and it looks just fine in that direction. Testing my pc at grc.com, my security is normally 'true stealth', not one port returning any responce whatsoever, so I turned it all off, and no change.

Could it be in the chipset itself? Ideas? I would really like to love the laptop again soon.

Please keep brainstorming with me on this, I am about ready to zero out the hard drive, knowing the windows format doesn't remove any of the data, while creating a virtual memory range, allowing me to wipe the tangible ram clean before dumping the virtual, but I don't really have malware indicators, but my mind is getting desperate at this point...