Wireless suddenly stops working on Studio 1557 laptop

Question

I have a Studio 1557 laptop (purchased in late December 2009) that all of a sudden has lost wireless connection to the internet. Went to use it last night (Thursday) for normal use and no wireless connection at all. Before this issue, there were no problems connecting thru wireless at all...in fact used it Wednesday evening for work/surfing and no problems whatsoever. We are using a Linksys 160N router...have 2 other computers and 2 iPod Touches that are connecting just fine, absolutely no problems. It can connect thru a wired connection with no problems but nothing thru wireless...this is a fairly new router, about 10 days old, but haven't had any issues with it since set-up.

Wanted to see if there might be any suggestions or thoughts before I delve into this over the weekend...didn't have much of a chance to do anything about this last night or this morning. I really don't want to bother calling Dell Support either...as that has never been a positive experience in the past.

Thanks for any possible help...JL

Dell Studio 1557 Windows 7 64-bit, 8gb 1066Mhz, 320HD

razy60 · Answer

Hi, I have been experiencing this as well. I have found that it is when my system is on battery(mainly) if i close the lid or even leave it for a while and the laptop goes into suspend /hibernation i presume(the only way to restart it is to press the power button as the power light is not flashing as it would if it was only in sleep mode). The way i have found to get it to restart is to power off the laptop wait for a few minutes then restart, hopefully the wifi will then come back up.

The annoying thing is that i have a few tools that i use to test and monitor signal ect. and they work fine i can see all the networks available but cant connect to mine until i switch off. As it is so recent i am wondering if it anything to do with any updates?

I have disabled the power saving switch and checked in the bios for any setting that may cause this the only other thing that has helped is to disconnect and disable the wifi if you are going to leave it for a while. Not that it is a solution but it has helped.

Raz

jlong4 · Answer

Razy...wanted to respond to you, as I know you brought this up on the "freeze-up" thread also, as you are right that it is populated with more users right now.

Lo and behold, I just got home...all prepared to "work on the wifi issue", fire up my 1557 and wireless is working just fine. I honestly don't understand it, however I have been doing ALOT of research on this issue, the freeze up issue and also the syncing issue with iPhone/iPod Touch. I really do like this laptop but am afraid that I purchased it too early instead of waiting until all the bugs were sorted out...I have a tendency to do that.

The link below is a lengthy thread dealing with Windows 7 users having problems with network connections, especially dealing with wireless connections. I am hesitant to do anything right now, as my wireless is working just fine...and I don't want to mess anything up. Although I am sure that it will happen again...unfortunately.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7network/thread/43f61a9c-069b-49ab-9f5b-f52ec2b1ef7e

You might look thru the link and see if anything might pertain to your situation. I am going to wait and see how long my wireless works before trying to "fix it".

JL

razy60 · Answer

jlong4. Nice find. lots of good info, i have however tested my theory and so far every time the laptop goes into suspend/hibernate ie the power light goes off and you have to resume by pressing the power button, the wireless will not work until you shut down wait and then restart, and as you said this is a recent event,

Not sure what the answer is but in this case i suspect windows rather than dell.

I will probably set the hibernate to "Never" in power options in the hope that it will help.

Good luck

Raz

jlong4 · Answer

That's probably a good idea about changing the hibernate option...hadn't thought of that.  My concern is I am past even trying to return this laptop...had it since end of December, '09 so way past the 'magic 21 days'.  Amazing how Dell could just throw away so many of its' customers like this...very unprofessional.

razy60 · Answer

Well assuming you read even half of the 1557,1747 and the xps 16 threads then i think you are right." Very unprofessional" also they dont care until people start to threaten them. This company has seriously gone down the pan. Mind we should think our selves lucky that we have not suffered the problems that the 17 and 16's have had.

Raz

Darth_CusCus · Answer

Here's my story and how I fixed it. I've been happily using the internet for ages and my laptop was great. Then the next day when I turned it on I found, to my disappointment that my laptop wasn't connecting to anything.

Here's my SOLUTION: (not sure if it'll work for everyone)

right click the wireless connection bar in the taskbar and click open NETWORK AND SHARING CENTRE

then scroll down and click troubleshoot problems

then click network adapters

then click the wireless network connection. (go through every one of the them)

for me it said the wirless capability was turned off... and so it turned it back on for me

so hopefully it will work for all of you

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

Wireless suddenly stops working on Studio 1557 laptop

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