BRAND NEW Inspiron 7000 WiFi is Horrendous!!

Info for Dell or whoever if they will even listen to this post as I cracked the case open on my laptop. Installed a 120gig samsung evo. Everything is fine except the wireless. It worked great the first few days then it started getting "limited" connections completely at random. Always requiring either a reboot or manually disconnecting and reconnecting to recover. Knowing that I had already blasted my warranty ( I knew this ahead of time ) I figured bad wifi card. I ordered a Intel Centrino 6235 with bluetooth 4.0. Installed. Everything was working beautifully for over a week. Just today exact same problem with totally different wifi card.

I believe the problem lies elsewhere, possible hardware defect maybe with the mini pcie port? Maybe a iffy power supply to the card, maybe heat (HWMonitor is stable at 40c though). I don't know and this is all guesswork. But can confirm exact same problem with 2 entirely different models of the wireless card.

To rule out drivers I also ran Ubuntu and Debian Testing for awhile. Problem occurred in both of those as well.

The internet on mine has been perfect. No complaints here.

Hi Girl Friday NY,

This is a bit off-topic I realize, but I'd appreciate your advice on connecting via Ethernet.  I am having a problem that is definitely with the wireless router, not my computer.  I've tried to connect via Ethernet using an ethernet-to-USB adapter (since the Inspiron 7000 doesn't have an ethernet port.)  This has not worked.  How did you connect your laptop via Ethernet?  Is there some other way to do this?

Hi,

The 7000 does have an Ethernet port, on the right hand side, or at least mine (Inspiron 7537) does.

Sue

I seem to have exactly the same fault here.

I bought the laptop INSPIRON 7000 1TB 8GB at the weekend and can I get anything to download ? No - the performance on WiFi is appauling. Packages I want to install that take under 5 mins on a desktop are coming up as 7-8 hours.

PLEASE tell me what solves this as I can't believe that the entire line of laptops has an endemic fault.

It doesn't.  Mine is fine. Plug in an Ethernet cable. Is the internet fine? If so the problem is your router, get a new one. Otherwise, update all your drivers (WiFi, Wireless Adapter, Network Adapter, etc) and reboot your router and modem. Check and see if your router has a firmware update and if so install it. Tweek your router's security settings too.

Mine is working well also.  The issue in my case was a shoddy wireless router where I'm temporarily staying; my phone had the exact same connection problems.  The laptop works very well on the reliable wi-fi at home.  I've plugged it in via an ethernet-to-USB adapter (the first adapter didn't work because it was for Macs, oops!). Now everything is running smoothly.  I don't think there is any problem with the computer.

I've been to a number of forums and sites trying to figure this <ADMIN NOTE: Substitute character removed as per TOU> brought my laptop back to BEST BUY (geek squad, which didn't know squat and was no help at all), and here's what I found out which eventually worked for me: 1) go to CONTROL PANEL 2) click HARDWARE AND SOUND 3) (top right) click DEVICE MANAGER 4) go to NETWORK ADAPTERS 5) drop down to INTEL (R) Wireless N 6) right click, select "PROPERTIES" 7) go to ADVANCED tab 8) under PROPERTY, go to HT MODE 9) under VALUE, select DISABLED Hope this helps!

Hi GIRLFRIDAYNY,

I purchased the same laptop yesterday and faced the same error for my machine. Fortunately, I stumbled upon this thread. after a long 5 hour battle i've been able to fix my problem via a very simple method. Please follow the instruction on this video and you(and others) shouldn't have this problem any more. 

Let me know if this doesn't work for you!

Regards

Akshay Pillai

Hello All,

I faced the same problem. I just received my brand new dell laptop (very nice device) but the the wifi is very weak. I did some comparisations with apple mac book and fujitsu (Windows 7) and everthing is working fine even from the "worst" locations the dell wasnt able to handle...So I contacted the dell service and they suggested to open the back cover to inspect the connection of the wifi antenna. I did but everything was fixed and the problem still exists. So according to the post in this thread I think it might be a problem with the Windows 8.1 driver, what Iam going to test today. so stay tuned...and if this it not working thelaptop will go back to dell which would be really a pitty.

Thanx

I bought this laptop without reading the reviews and all. I have been facing issue with WIFI from the day 1. I really got frustrated.I'm seriously do not recommend this laptop to anyone. It's a defective product.

Now Dell is trying to change the wireless card in the brand new laptop to fix the issue.

I also have the same issue with the Dell 7537 insperion.  My Intel 7260 wifi adapter was replaced with another 7260 board.  There was no change, the signal was still weak and the  speed test showed 2 to 12 Mbps compared to 20 to 30Mbps on a 7 year old Dell Vostro 1500.  I requested a different wifi adapter other than Intel, and they agreed to ship a Dell DW1707 wifi adapter board.  That was supposed to be shipped 5 days ago, but it is out of stock, so who knows when it will be shipped.  This is a serious problem with many, many Dell customers.  The Intel N7260 adapter has known problems with windows 8.1  I am just using 80.11G.  I believe that my problem is just a result of a very weak signal and not related to a driver issue.  My drivers have been replaced a dozen times and my system wiped clean at least 2 times.  Yet 4 other computers on two different routers all perform flawlessly at speeds 3 times faster than my Insperion 7537.  Many people have tried a different wifi adapter and have had good results.    I will update this posting when I replace the board.  I strongly recommend you ask for a different wifi adapter card.

Have the same model  17".  Returned first one for bad conductivity.  From my location my five year old inspiron was fine. My wife's new latitude with same wireless card fine too.  Spend nearly 3 days on phone with Dell.  About to return second when I decide try Netgear a6210 adapter.  Solved the problem immediately.  Had some problems with compatibility with Window 10, but worked those out.  Something wrong with the base model.

My laptop has settled down now. I got a new free router that came with my broadband supplier that has cured all issues, but even before this the problem was largely fixed by more recent device drivers, I think.