Hi!

I seem to have a problem with my Dell DW1520 wireless LAN card installed on a Studio 1747 laptop.

The LAN card seems to have a mind of its own and is rarely enabled at start up. Repeatedly restarting the laptop a few times somehow magically enables the network card though.

When disabled, I can see the red cross on the task bar (network connection). The network card is not even detected and is not visible in device manager. However, when I restart the laptop a few times, the bars appear, the LAN card appears in device manager and I can connect to the wireless network.

I logged a call with Dell Technical support for this and a different issue (BSOD and restart). They replaced my motherboard and asked me to monitor the situation. While the BSOD/restart issue seems to have disappeared with the motherboard replacement, the wireless LAN card issue still remains. The person that came to install the motherboard also tried installing new drivers for the LAN card but that hasn't helped. Dell tech support now say that I must reinstall the whole Operating System (Windows 7), drivers etc from scratch.

I haven't yet got around to it but thought I will look for alternative solutions before taking the extreme step of backing up, formatting and reinstalling everything. Any help with this will be really appreciated.

Regards