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Do all D600s have wireless LAN?
I'm a network admin and this is the first D600 that I have setup. It has been used by another person previously so I might not have all of the information I need. That being said here is my dillema:
I think that this is supposed to have a wireless LAN card built in but I can see no proof that there is one. Device Manager show only the Broadcom gigabit controller, no WAN. I've downloaded every Wireless NIC driver that I can find and none have worked, I've inserted the Dell drivers and Utilities CD and it does not find a wireless NIC. The Add Hardware wizard does not find new devices and I'm out of ideas.
I need to be certain that there actually is no wireless card before I give it to my customer but I'm pretty certain that there shoudl be one. What else can I do?
Thank you, that is exactly what I needed to know. I saw that there was no card in that slot but still thought it could have it installed. (somewhere on the mobo i was guessing).
This is the kind of person I had to be 200% sure before I gave it to her. Thanks again.
christophe1676
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Posted February 10th, 2005 23:00
Without opening up the miniPCI cover, if my D600 has a pentium sticker that says "M" on it as well as the option to press Fn and F2 for the radio signal, does this mean I have the internal card? Thanks!
Chrischristophe1676
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Posted February 11th, 2005 12:00
That's a negative. The only adapter shown is the Broadcom 570x Gigabit Integrated Controller. Is an adapter the same thing as a driver?
Chris- Chris,
There are only two remaining possibilities - the wireless card's not installed, or it's not enabled in the BIOS setup. Oddly, the mini-PCI adapter isn't mentioned in the D600 User Manual. But you can see if you can find any mention of the adapter in the BIOS setup by booting the machine and tapping the "F2" key as it's starting. That will cause the machine to enter the BIOS System Setup Program.
Page forward using "Alt-P", and check for any settings related to the mini-PCI adapter under "Basic Device Configuration". If it's disabled, enable it.
The term "adapter" normally refers to the physical device itself. "Driver" refers to the low-level operating system software that controls the device's operation.
Jim christophe1676
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Posted February 11th, 2005 16:00
Well, that solved it. I went into the BIOS and found this:
Wireless Configuration
Onboard Bluetooth: Not Installed
MiniPCI Device: Not Installed
What does the "M" on the Pentium sticker mean if I still have to install something? I had the impression the wireless technology was on the motherboard already? I guess I need to get me a miniPCI card. How much do they cost? Thanks Jim!
Chrischristophe1676
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Posted February 11th, 2005 19:00
Cool. Thanks Jim. For some reason I thought the "M" meant mobile :)
Chris
jwatt
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Posted January 17th, 2005 17:00
The definitive way is to open the mini-PCI card cover and see what's there. If there's a card present, it may have been disabled in the BIOS setup.
Jim