Venue 11 Pro: My WiFi adapter dies ever night!

For what it's worth, I'm using a Belkin N150 F9K1001TT router, and have not experienced connectivity issues on a DVP11 5130, including overnight sleep and wake up connection. As cheap as routers are today, I'm wondering if trying another router brand/model would be an easier fix at this point, especially with a retailer that allows easy exchanges just in case the new one doesn't work either (eg. Amazon)... ?

 - Woody

Woody - As I've reported elsewhere, this also happens when I travel, which is a lot. I am sure it has happened on every brand of router in about 6 different hotels and airports. It is not useful for people to tell me that their system works. I would like mine to work.

Ok, I'm setting mine the same way and will leave it overnight and see what happens in the morning.   Thanks for the steps.

Brian - I reproduced the problem for you so I could check the Current Power State. I found that it is D0. The power state is D0 also when the wireless adapter is working, so I am not sure this tells us anything. I found an easy way to duplicate the problem or to avoid it. I have my 5130 set so it never goes to sleep, but the screen turns off after 30 minutes idle. If I leave Google News running all night, then the wireless does not go into a coma. I think this is because Google News refreshes itself every few minutes so it exercises the wifi connection. If I do not leave anything running, the wifi adapter reliably goes into a coma within 3 hours. I can tell this is the case because my overnight backup program fails to run at 1am. In the morning after the wifi fails, the wifi connection usually still shows the status "Connected," but sometimes (about 1/3 of the mornings) it shows "Limited." But the functionality is equally lacking either way. When I launch the browser to any web site, I get "This page can't be displayed". Usually I can fix this by clicking the button labeled "Fix connection problems", or by turning wifi off and on in the charms bar. Sometimes (about once a week) this doesn't work, and I have to go into Device Manager and disable and enable on the 1538 Driver tab. In any case, if I fail to leave Google News (or something else that exercises the connection) running, my overnight backup routine always fails, so this is a bad thing. I also find that if I leave the device idle for a long period at any other time day or night, the wifi does the same thing, goes into a coma and needs to be revived before the browser will work. Update: When I click the "Fix connection problems" button, it runs through some tests and in the "resolving problems" phase it reports that it is resetting the network adapter. After "Troubleshooting is completed" it reports the following: Problems found: The connection between your access point, router, or cable modem and the internet is broken. - Detected. The default gateway is not available - Fixed After this, the wifi is back to life and the browser, email, and backup all work fine. So I suppose it is fixing the problem the same way I do, except I can do it faster. If there is anything else I can check for you, please let me know. I have already uninstalled and reinstalled all the drivers in the order you have specified elsewhere, and all are up-to-date. the Dell Wireless 1538 driver is at 3.7.2.45425.

I have exactly the same problem. So after leaving the DVP11 unused a while I check the Wifi connection first and refresh it if needed before browsing .  This is a nuisance. I do notice that if the unit is in same room as my router this does not happen ?? 

So I tried this overnight.   I woke my device up this morning via the Windows Home Button.   When the screen came on, I saw that the WIFI icon had no connection, but it immediately reconnected (<1 second).  When I opened up IE, I was able to get to Google right away.

So, we must have something going on with either the driver stack or the hardware.

My wireless driver is the same as mentioned above - 3.7.2.45425 and I am running BIOS A04.

Did you guys get hit by the bad Microsoft Update on or around 12/10/13?   This would have taken out your WIFI all together.    The only other thing I can think of that might be causing the problem is the update stack.   My device did not experience that problem.

Have you already had an exchange for another device?   e.g. Does this happen for you on more than one device?

I didn't have the Windows Update issue. This is my second Venue 11. I am not sure whether the first one had this problem. It had much worse problems so I had to return it before I ever got it set up.

It takes about a day to setup one of these and install all the programs, templates, data, etc. so I'm not eager to do it unless I'm sure it isn't flushing more good time after bad. I bought this thing from the Microsoft Store. How does that work, does Dell let you keep a new one for a few days to give you a chance to make sure it works?

I let my device sleep again overnight - just woke it up with a home button press and WIFI came back immediately again.    I'm at a bit of a loss as to why yours is doing this and mine is not.   I'm going to send you a PM - I'd like to capture your device back to Austin for some F/A - hopefully we can get to the bottom of why this is happening.

Is your Bluetooth radio turned off?   I have the exact problem but if I leave the Bluetooth radio ON, it does not occur.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/mobile-devices/f/3824/t/19537627.aspx

I shut off the Bluetooth radio on my Venue 11 Pro (5130) and when the tablet goes to sleep for a while, maybe like 4 hours of sleeping the wifi radio will not wake up.  I have to reset windows then the wifi radio works normally.  If the Bluetooth radio is left on, the wifi radio works normally and doesn't have this problem.  I re-installed the wireless driver again to see if that fixes the problem but it does not.

A04 that's what u have now then go to drivers n downloads, there is a A05 now which is current so try updating drivers.

Skyrida, it depends which DVP11 model - as of 12/31/2013, the latest BIOS for 5130 is A04, whereas for 7130/9 it is a05. - Woody

Here is something new. Last Friday night my 5130 turned itself off overnight - apparently a normal shutdown since I was able to power it up normally in the morning. It had never done that before. So the first thing I checked was the power settings in Control Panel, and oddly, the sleep setting had changed to 30 minutes. I hadn't visited that widget in weeks, and had set it to "Never" when first setting up the new tablet.

So I changed this setting back to Never, rebooted, and verified that the setting was still Never. The next night, the tablet shut itself down again! I rechecked the Power management widget and the setting is still Never.

The only thing that has changed in my tablet since before Christmas is that I installed the touch screen driver update. I haven't installed any other new software or changed any other settings. So this is an entirely new behavior that I can't explain. It's a problem since, like the wifi sleep problem, it prevents the overnight backup from running, and also renders the alarm clock program useless.

I am not sure whether this is related to the wifi sleep problem or is something else. But I am letting you know in case it helps you with your forensics. It lends some credence to the idea that there is some sort of fault with the hardware that might be causing both problems. So it makes me feel a little more open to the idea that replacing the unit (again) might solve the problems.

Edit: Forgot to mention a couple of things. In the past couple of days I've experimented with this new behavior. If the sleep setting is 30 minutes, the tablet powers down after exactly 30 minutes if I leave it in the keyboard, lid open, but idle with no programs running. This does not happen if the lid is closed or if I hit the power button to put it to sleep.

If the sleep setting is Never, the tablet always powers itself down during the night but it takes more than 30 minutes before this happens. So far, this has always happened while I was asleep. My alarm clock program, which is called HD Alarm Clock (Byteract), has a feature to prevent the tablet from sleeping during the night. This has always worked as advertised. I have kept this running during the night but it does not prevent the tablet from shutting itself down. I also noted previously that it does not prevent the wifi adapter from going to sleep.

Maybe next I'll try keeping Google News running to see if exercising the wifi adapter prevents the shutdown.

I will experiment some more. Brian, if there's anything you want me to try, let me know.

After some more testing it appears that the tablet now shuts down on pretty much the same conditions when previously the WiFi adapter was shutting down. Keeping Google News running (thus exercising the WiFi connection) works to prevent the overnight shutdown of the tablet. The change in behavior might be caused by the touch screen driver update, or might be the normal jostling that comes from being carried around in a travel bag.

Wow this is just unbelievable. At Brian's request a Dell support person called me up and asked a few questions about my WiFi problem. He asked if I would allow him to remotely access my computer to check a few things. So I agreed. He poked around remotely in the drivers and Windows updates, then asked me to reboot. So I did that. After the reboot, we were unable to reconnect to the network. He led me through a few more steps, but could not get it working. So he gave up and said he would send me a new tablet within 10 days.

So with Dell's help my Venue 11 tablet, which was at least limping along in an inconvenient way before, now is completely inoperative.

I have had bad experiences where I've called a support person who was unable to help me. But this is the first time a support person has ever taken the initiative to call me up and brick my computer remotely. This is worse than bad service, it's criminal.

Sorry about that.   I'm not sure what was done, but you may be seeing the issue that was caused by some of the Windows Updates getting installed out of sequence.   This did impact some Venue 11 devices (Atom only).    Even though you weren't seeing the issue, it is possible that the tech introduced it while troubleshooting your system.

Please try this to see if you can fix it.   Also, it is possible that your device took some additional Windows Updates - you may want to try a simple reboot first to make sure nothing is "in process".

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/dell/59992-latest-windows-update-breaking-wifi.html#post359744

Yep, thanks Brian, you hit the nail right on the head.

I went and got a USB-to-Ethernet dongle so I could connect to the outside world, then followed the process you linked. I had to also re-install the wifi driver, but finally I am back where I started. That includes the wifi adapter coma problem, which is still happening after all of that. But at least I can cycle the wifi switch to get connected again when I need to.

This was the second Dell support rep who has told me that if I run into any problems with uninstalling and reinstalling drivers, all I have to do is a Windows Reset. These guys don't have any understanding of their customers. They don't realize how long it takes to re-install and configure 20+ real-world programs.