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Wireless Card won't enable any more
| Inspiron 11z (1110) Vista7 - 64bit wireless card - Dell 1510 (half or mini I think)
After some blue screens whilst on wireless I tried updating the drivers. Now I can't be absolutely certain that this is the exact cause (I also had some windows updates at a similar time) but ... Wireless no longer works. I now find that the Network Adapters page reports the card as "disabled". Double clicking starts the enabling process and it finalises saying "enabled" ... but the adapter is still showing as disabled. I've carefully followed the driver update procedure (and subsequently updated the chipset drivers and THEN the wireless ones). I've even tried a Broadcomm driver (with the same results). Device Manager reports the card as "working properly" - and even implies that it is currently enabled (because the only option is to disable). I've tried the F2 on/off option. It seems to be working (i.e. the check box changes back and forth) ... but the card is never enabled. Troubleshooting says that "there may be a problem with the driver" but it fails to fix this when I run the fix option.
I've spent quite a few hours over the last couple of days banging away at this and I REALLY need the laptop working properly for the weekend.
I've run out of ideas. Even System Restore doesn't help (it comes back with some complaint about there being anti-virus software involved - well of course !).
I've review this forum and haven't seen quite the same problem. Any suggestions gratefully received !
Regards
Graham
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bobcollard
21 Posts
302
0
Posted June 6th, 2010 16:00
If you have a firewall running it may interfere with your wireless.
Thanks for your post Bob. It's nice to know that at least someone is reading my message !
I do understand your Firewall point - I am a reasonably "advanced" user. I spent two whole afternoons wrestling with the problem last week. One of the first things I did was to disable the firewall (the excellent Zonealarm, which had worked fine from new in April) and I even completely uninstalled the anti-virus software (which has also worked well for two months).
The wireless card still refused to work.
I uninstalled and re-installed several times, using the Dell driver that came with the PC, the latest one from the website ... and even a Broadcomm driver. Still no joy.
The laptop has now left the UK and is in Atlanta with my partner. I talked her through a more thorough unin/rein process which included several reboots and disabling and then re-enabling the wireless card in the BIOS.
Not only has this brought no joy, but now the laptop is prone to blue screen randomly. Once it went BSOD after only 5 mins of up time - and it wasn't even being used.
Needless to say it is now so unreliable as to be almost unusable. I've never known of such an issue in almost two decades of ownership of multiple desktops and laptops.
I looks like this machine will be going back to Dell. It's made me think seriously (for the first time ever) of getting a Mac !
Regards
Graham
GrahamW42
8 Posts
302
0
Posted June 4th, 2010 14:00
More info.
I've used Admin Tools and seen a lot of Network related services which are running, also in system config. There aren't any obvious candidates which need to be turned on.
I also looked in the BIOS and saw that wireless is enabled there too.