Strange Problem

[Jukebox]

I have a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop which always fails to connect to the wireless network/internet after sleep/restart etc. I have ensured that ‘connect automatically’ is ticked and have even reloaded the OS, but no improvement! I have now found that if I switch to ‘Flight Mode’ (Fn F2) and then switch back again the wireless connects within a second or two. This laptop doesn’t have an ethernet connection. Any ideas? John

[PlaneMan]

Try to update the WiFi driver would be my first thing to do.

[Jukebox]

Tried that!

[JayCeeDee]

I remember on an old Dell laptop there was a switch on the side to turn it on/off. Also a key combination.

 

 

[JayCeeDee]

Went back to edit in links, but it blew me out.

Key combo Fn/F2

Switch details :-These controls are more commonly found in older models, including the Dell Inspiron 1525 (originally released in 2008) which features a dedicated switch to turn its Wi-Fi connectivity on and off. Many users may not be expecting such a switch to be included on their laptop, leading to some confusion when internet connections aren’t available.

[Ed P]

Sounds a bit like a DHCP problem, try the old CLI mantra of:

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

ipconfig /flushdns

See: https://geeksadvice.com/release-and-renew-ip-address/

As to WHY you have problems I can’t really guess, except I would tend to point my finger at your IPS supplier particularly if BT, or that your local cache is corrupt. Maybe someone else has a better idea.

[PlaneMan]

If you have a fairly recent mobile with a decent data allowance try setting up a hotspot, connect to that  and see if the problem goes away. If so, ISP probably, if not probably the laptop.

Try a Linux live session also, if you have’t already.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

You are not alone with this problem, unfortunately it looks like it may be a hardware fault, if you have the intel WiFi module then it almost certainly is 🙄

[Dave Rice]

I agree with WoF, but one thing worth trying. Find it in Device Manager, right click, Properties, Power Management Tab. Untick “Allow the Computer to turn of this device to save power”.

[Tippon]

Who is your ISP? I’ve just switched to BT for full fibre, and I’m getting similar problems. Rather than not connecting at all though, I’m getting much slower connections.

All of my wifi devices seem to be doing the same – I make a new connection and everything works perfectly. I get 340Mbps on a 300 Mbps connection. If anything sleeps, or is shut down, or even goes out of range temporarily, the speed drops to 60 or below.

At the moment I’ve only got one wired connection, and I haven’t stopped, so I haven’t had a chance to look into it further.

[Ed P]

The BT Hub1 is utter carp with respect to wifi. I changed to BT Hub2 which comes with a mesh wifi and things are much better, but still subject to the occasional slow downs that Tippon mentions. As wired suffers no such slowdowns it is obviously a malign contention algorithm that BT use for their wifi.

[Jukebox]

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

You are not alone with this problem, unfortunately it looks like it may be a hardware fault, if you have the intel WiFi module then it almost certainly is

Thank you all for your suggestions, none of which unfortunately cured the problem! I’m not sure what WiFi module I have – Speccy reports it as Dell (I suspect that’s just the driver), HWINFO as Qualcomm Atheros. However once I’d discovered that pressing Fn/F2 twice allowed it to connect within a couple of seconds the problem became less of an issue. Nevertheless as curiosity got the better of me I bought a Dynamode USB wireless module and disabled the on-board one and that works perfectly so it looks like WoF was correct – duff hardware.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Speccy and HWINFO may both be correct. Qualcomm Atheros is the name of the company and they make an OEM WiFi module for Dell called the Dell Wireless 1502. Unfortunately Dell is responsible for supplying the driver for it so if it’s faulty, and you already have the latest version, then there’s nothing you can do.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Out of interest, Microsoft supplies a class driver for WiFi devices and it comes with Windows. The class driver will work at a basic level with ALL WiFi devices so manufacturers only have to supply a mini driver to support any special features their device supports. Unfortunately power saving modes often come under the heading of special features 🙄

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