Intermittent WIFI connection?

I'm sorry to report that the new driver has made no difference. Wifi and bluetooth still drop. Waking from sleep issues. Wifi generally slow and unreliable (other devices have no problem at all).

Is Dell willing to acknowledge that this is unacceptable? When you buy a brand new device and some of the core functionality is defective, is it the responsibility of you as a customer to spend countless hours roaming on forums for possible solutions? Four months down the road the tablet is still just more or less unusable. I've had enough of trying to get it to work.

Brian, I fully appreciate all the effort that you have put into helping out and finding a solution, but I've reached the point that I really regret buying the Venue Pro, instead of a product that 'just works'. Will Dell allow me to return the Venue Pro and give me back my money?

Thank you.

I don't know if this will help but try uninstalling windows updates:

KB 2887595

KB 2903939

KB 2883200

I have a DELL Venue 11 Pro that kept dropping its network connection.  After some research I discovered the previously mentioned updates from Microsoft introduced the problem. After removing them all I have had no problems.

If you still have a problem look for windows update KB 2967919 and remove it as it may also reintroduce the problem.

If your problem still persists then I would indeed return your purchase.  Good luck.

Respectfully,

Del Thompson

Thank you Del. I have seen that posted before (possibly by you?) but always felt that these updates were not released for nothing and should be installed. However, if it makes the difference between a unusable and usable tablet, why not get rid of them...

In your experience, once you uninstall them, do they keep coming back with auto updating? I like auto updating for security reasons. It would be a bit unpractical if you had to uninstall them after each monthly update round. But then again, if it makes the wifi actually work....

Thanks for your help

Kind regards

KB 2967919 - there is probably a typo in the name of this update if I google it I only find links to this thread... Could it be KB2769299? That is the most recent update on my machine, and the only one that starts with 27.

Thanks for the additional explanation Del. Much appreciated! I will follow your advice.

Kind regards

New 7260 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth driver released on 8/15.

Unfortunately you are probably right... I was so hoping and assuming that Dell would be fixing the issues after all these month that I mistook the update for a WiFi update :-(

This is what I installed: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=DHHR7&fileId=3392894794&osCode=WB32A&productCode=dell-venue-11-pro&languageCode=EN&categoryId=CM and another one simililar

It will probably not make any difference then. How much longer do we have to wait? I bought my Venue Pro in early May, but from what i understand the issues have been around since December.

Great tip. There are also new drivers for the 5130. I've just installed them. Very curious to see if this finally solves the issues. The suggestions posted by dlthompson471 have improved things somewhat, but both Bluetooth and WiFi have remained pretty unreliable till today. Much too unreliable to really enjoy the Venue pro. Maybe the new drivers are the much needed magic bullet.

I'll post the results in a few days. The problem with issues like these is that you can't predict when they happen. We have experienced periods of uninterrupted use for over an hour. That makes pinpointing the issues pretty tricky. Sometimes it seems they are gone, but often they make using the device a disappointing experience...

I had the original problem (although my tablet needed a complete power cycle, rather than just a wireless toggle,  to get the wireless up & running again). This seemed to be fixed by the latest drivers, but I still have a related, second problem - frequently, the tablet will not wake from sleep at all, and needs to be hard reset. The reason I think that this is related to the wireless driver is as follows:

The original (losing wireless) problem only occurred at work, where I roam. It never happens at home (where I don't roam). The latest driver specifically fixed a roaming issue, and solved this problem. However the 'not waking from sleep' problem shows the same issue - it happens 1-2 times/day at work (where I roam) but never at home (where I don't roam). Any troubleshooting that could help Dell sort this out? Or do I have faulty hardware?

Hello Brian,

I'm travelling the planet for a while and I'm therefor using a different router at guesthouses and hotels let's say every second night. I can tell you it has absolutely nothing to do with the type of router as chances are extremely limited that all the place where the problem occurs have the same routers.

Also coming out of Sleep mode, Airplane Mode, a Bluetooth session, et cetera is not the problem as far as I'm concerned, as even after a normal boot and working for a couple of hours suddenly wifi reception is limited (well, if you can call zero response "limited" that is...). However, EVERY single time until now there was a Windows notification on my screen that I had to install an important update - which I would LOVE to do but couldn't. So... looking back at other posts, forums, et cetera it doesn't seem to be related to a certain update but to ALL updates or at least the notification for them. I've come to this conclusion just now and as a result have turned off Automatic Updates AND their notifications. Since there's no notification waiting for me right now AND I have a full connection I hope the problem will stay away. Normally it comes back every 1 to 3 days so I'll report back in let's say a week from now - hopefully not earlier with bad news... ;-)

I expect that you have the Intel Dual Band AC 7260 Wifi Card.  This has been on an ongoing problem with this Wifi card and there are many forum complaints in communities.intel.com, go to the Wifi Networks Forum.

Intel has been releasing driver updates every two months for a year now and has still not resolved the no connection coming out of sleep problem. They are at v17.1.* now. 

I have rolled back to v16.10 which fixes the limited connection after sleep, but max speeds are a horrible 3 to 4Mbps, where an iPhone gets 25Mbps on the same Access Point. It does depend on the AP you are connected to, and some people are saying it is a router problem, but that is asinine. The 7260 is a defective device and Dell and Intel need to do something significant to fix it.

I've been dealing with the intermittent WIFI connection problems on my Dell Venue Pro since January 2014.

I purchased the Intel Atom powered model and made more than 20 calls to Dell Technical support to try and resolve the problem, but the problems persist even after receiving a brand new replacement tablet this week. 

In August the Dell technician agreed to send it to the repair depot to replace the motherboard.  It came back from the depot without the motherboard replacement being made, and it still did not work.  The next call to the technicians was a 2 hour call during which the technician ran several diagnostics, but the next day the problem of intermittent WIFI was still happening.

During the next call, the technicians agreed to give me a refurbished unit.  I waited 3 weeks and received what appears to be a brand new tablet powered by the i3 processor.  This new unit failed to function for more than 4 hours before intermittent internet connectivity started again.  A  1-hour call with the technician fixed the problem, but only temporarily, because Windows 8.1 updates were installed when I switched off the tablet and I haven't been able to reliably use the internet since then. 

The next day, I called technical support again, but without an internet connection they must now mail me a USB with the Windows software because for some reason we can't do a full refresh or restore of the operating system to roll back the Windows updates.

I really want to like my Dell Venue Pro, but the entire process has been an enormous frustration, despite the sincere attempts of Dell Technical support.  At this point, I am waiting for the USB with reboot software to be shipped, but I have very little confidence that I will ever have a reliable, functioning computer after 9 months of disappointment.