You can't do much about the problem short of buying another card, but there are two things you should do
1) email intel about the disconnect problem -- they will send you beta drivers which help somewhat. if you don't like this, you can try the version 8 drivers (which are more stable than 9 but lack AES support). with the beta drivers, try playing around with the roaming aggressiveness setting if your in an environment with more than one access point. if you're in a mixed mode environmental also try varring which form of mixed mode protection is used -- for me CTS-to self offers better performance but is less stable than RTS/CTS.
2) every time you turn on the computer, resume from standby, log-on, enable wireless, or the like, go into the card's properties for transmit power -- deselect defualt, move the slider around a bit, then put the slider on max, then hit ok. you must do this everytime -- it works, but will naturally also tank your battery, so it's a tradeoff.
One thing to try is to make sure you're using the Intel PROSet/Wireless Client instead of the Microsoft Client. Right click on it in the tray and choose to use the Intel one. Then like Nemesis said you can right click and open the Intel PROSet/Wireless app and go to Tools->Adapter settings and change power management to Highest. That will turn off the power save polling that causes issues sometimes.
I guess you're lucky or just talented, but switching to the Intel client fixed my intermittent connection drops. I got popup bubbles every couple minutes and managed to transfer only 10s of megabytes from a ReplayTV through DVArchive each time I tried with the Microsoft client, and as soon as I switched I finished 10 episodes in one task for a total of 4+ gigs with no disconnect. This was just with the drivers on the dell support site circa about 3 days ago and a D-Link 614+ that only does 802.11b. Also, somehow I was only getting ~200KB/s through DVArchive before the change to highest power setting and afterwards I managed to get my max allowed throughput of 375KB/s consistently. So I guess YMMV and HTH.
When I toggle the wireless on/off with Fn+F2 and even after a reboot the Intel client retains its advanced adapter settings (Power management Highest is the only thing I have changed from default, though I have also experimented with enabling Intel Throughput Enhancement), and I am still getting great speeds and no disconnects so far. I just snagged another gig or so with no problems. Maybe it's not important, but I'm running a clean XP Pro install updated with SP2, not the stock XP Home or Pro. This is my first Dell so I just figured I should go down the list of driver updates and install all the ones for hardware I had. That seemed to work out. Luck beats skill I guess. Again, HTH.
robucf
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June 23rd, 2005 15:00
zahidism
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June 23rd, 2005 19:00
NemesisDB
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June 23rd, 2005 20:00
You can't do much about the problem short of buying another card, but there are two things you should do
1) email intel about the disconnect problem -- they will send you beta drivers which help somewhat. if you don't like this, you can try the version 8 drivers (which are more stable than 9 but lack AES support). with the beta drivers, try playing around with the roaming aggressiveness setting if your in an environment with more than one access point. if you're in a mixed mode environmental also try varring which form of mixed mode protection is used -- for me CTS-to self offers better performance but is less stable than RTS/CTS.
2) every time you turn on the computer, resume from standby, log-on, enable wireless, or the like, go into the card's properties for transmit power -- deselect defualt, move the slider around a bit, then put the slider on max, then hit ok. you must do this everytime -- it works, but will naturally also tank your battery, so it's a tradeoff.
NemesisDB
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June 24th, 2005 16:00
tyrus
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June 24th, 2005 16:00
Message Edited by tyrus on 06-24-2005 12:06 PM
tyrus
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June 24th, 2005 20:00
NemesisDB
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June 24th, 2005 21:00
tyrus
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June 25th, 2005 00:00
robucf
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June 27th, 2005 13:00
I have tried both (Windows and Proset) and they all have the disconnect problems.
zahidism
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June 27th, 2005 14:00
NemesisDB
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July 3rd, 2005 02:00
akramsmg
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July 3rd, 2005 02:00
robucf
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July 5th, 2005 14:00
I installed em, so far so good... Only had to click "Repair" once this weekend.
zahidism
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July 5th, 2005 15:00
akramsmg
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July 6th, 2005 09:00