Wireless wont connect, sometimes wont find router

[hansencomputers]

Greetings,

This is my first post here. The issue is with the built-in wireless in my Dell Latitude D600 laptop. The built-in wireless is Intel PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3A Mini PCI Adapter. The operating system is Win XP Home with SP3.

The symptoms are that the wireless networks are detected, but intermittently. Sometimes I see the router of the people next door, and down the street, but not mine only 3 meters away. I would say 25% of the time, it sees the distant routers, and not mine in the same room.

When I do see the router, it shows maximum signal strength. When I try to connect, Windows attempts, then fails after some time. The Intel software also fails. I have disabled the WEP from the router.

I have verified the hardware is working by booting up a Linux Live CD (Puppy 4.1 "retro") and connecting to my router without issues.

I have tried installing the latest drivers, obtained from the Dell WEB site, but this did not help. By the way, wired LAN has no issues. Also, another laptop running XP side-by-side with he Dell is connecting. I compared all settings I could find, and made them match, but still no luck with the Dell's wireless.

I found Dial-A-Fix, and it looked promising. I tried most items I found int he tool box, but still no luck.

Well, I'm stuck and out of ideas. Any clues or pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Tarun]

I too had to repair wireless when I upgraded to SP3 on a Dell laptop here at home. Uninstalling, running CCleaner's Issues cleaner and then reinstalling the wireless drivers and software seemed to resolve the issue.

[Eldmannen]

That is pretty strange.

Since it works fine in Linux but not in Windows, it almost makes you think it would be a device driver problem, but that don't make sense because I don't think Dell would ship a computer with a built-in wireless card that does not have decent drivers for Windows.

Maybe contact Dell customer service?

Maybe try enable WEP on the router, but I suppose you already did that. Either way, you shouldn't use WEP anyways, its insecure and deprecated, you should probably be using WPA2.

[hansencomputers]

That is pretty strange.

Since it works fine in Linux but not in Windows, it almost makes you think it would be a device driver problem, but that don't make sense because I don't think Dell would ship a computer with a built-in wireless card that does not have decent drivers for Windows.

Maybe contact Dell customer service?

Maybe try enable WEP on the router, but I suppose you already did that. Either way, you shouldn't use WEP anyways, its insecure and deprecated, you should probably be using WPA2.

Hi,

Thanks for the input so far. I did try numerous things, such as CCleaner's Registry Issues fix. I also tried with/without WEP (I know WEP is old and easily cracked, but I don't think my router has WPA, I'll have to check).

The laptop's wireless was working, but I'm not sure what went wrong or exactly when. It isn't SP3's fault, since the wireless problem was present before SP3 was installed.

My thought is that there is some Windows setting somewhere that I don't know of, or can't access, that is somehow wrong. This is why I thought Dial-A-Fix might get the job done.

Unfortunately I can not do an in-place install. This laptop was originally running WIN 2000, and was upgraded (not by me) to XP. It seems a legit copy, since Genuine Advantage says all is OK. When I try to do an in-place install, the "Upgrade" option is disabled. This would normally allow installation, while leaving non-system files in place, as well as programs. I don't know why this is. I have tried with both OEM and Retail copies of XP Home.

I have also run "System File Checker", and this did not resolve it.

I look forward to any more ideas. If I solve it myself, I'll post how it worked.

Mike