Dell Latitude D620 Wireless Issues

[DiscoDave]

Hi Everyone, I have a D620 and are experiencing some wireless problems. The card in it is a Intel Pro Wireless 3945ABG with the latest drivers on Vista Business. Before I had windows XP running on this machine and when connecting to various different networks I would get some major packet loss (25%-50%). On vista it's intermittant. Its been working fine but last night i was getting about 10% packet loss. I have even tried on two routers. Also this morning ive had the network card randomly disabling itself (even the wifi light on the laptop dissapears)

Jusg doing some ping requests throws back some odd results:

Code: Select all

Pinging www.l.google.com [64.233.183.104] with 32 bytes of data:

General failure.
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.233.183.104: bytes=32 time=104ms TTL=244
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 64.233.183.104:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 1, Lost = 3 (75% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 104ms, Maximum = 104ms, Average = 104ms

anyone got any ideas?

Thanks



Edit: just done a ping -t to google, 151 packets with one loss. <1% is an acceptable threshold in my opinion :P.

[+JuggerNaut+]

you been using the same drivers from the previous install (version anyway)? try rolling back one. the latest doesn't always = the greatest.

[DiscoDave]

No luck juggs, rollback isn't an option. Ive also tried windows default and intel drivers

[raw]

Have you gone to http://support.dell.com and used those drivers?

[DiscoDave]

Juggs/Raw - Tried both your suggestions with no luck

[+JuggerNaut+]

that thing out of warranty?

[DiscoDave]

that thing out of warranty?

Probably not however this laptop was a free gift from work (the kind not many people should be made aware of) so claiming on it might be a problem.

My brother got a new router (for other reasons than my problem) and it came with a free USB dongle. Ive used it with the software and had no problems now. Router config is the same with SSID off, WPA2 [TKIP] encryption etc.

So my ideas are that it's to do with the card in the laptop, or the antennas going up the side of my monitor.

I opened up the laptop and noticed there is another mini PCI slot labelled (W WAN - huh?) with its on dedicated antennas. For a laugh i plugged my network card into there and tested it out. Vista recongnised it as usual but had the same problems as mentioned in previous posts.

I think i'll just buy a replacement mini pci netowork card and see how it goes. This dongle is ugly...

[+JuggerNaut+]

that sucks man, but...free is free.

[DiscoDave]

lol aye im not complaining really. a new mini pci network card will only cost me about £15.

Thanks for your help though guys, always appreciated