HELP! - M6400 Wireless Radio Shut Down

This morning when I turned the M6400 on, my wireless had shut down, showing a X on the tray icon. It has been working fine under my Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit for weeks, since I used the free upgrade I got from the Microsoft Windows 7 demo. The Intel 5300 was fine in device manager. When I ran the Intel ProSet Wireless diagnostics, it said that the Radio is Switched Off. The driver is the latest Intel 13.0.0 version for Windows 7 64bit.

I called Dell Business Support and the tech spent an hour uninstalling and reinstalling the driver, reinstalling the ProSet utilities and trying to find a way to get the radio to switch on. He tried to uninstall the Intel generic driver and install the older Dell driver, but apparently could not get the Intel to uninstall, so the installation of the older driver kept failing.

The tech finally gave up, saying there was no way to switch the radio on. He said the driver probably was not "completely compatible with Windows 7" and I should ask around the net or do a complete reinstall of the operating system. No way I will do that for this problem.

Anybody have any ideas, before I pull the 5300 wireless card and try going back to the old 1397 that you still see in my signature???

 

Most odd.
I presume that you've looked at the obvious - like the hardware switch etc?

I am running with the Intel 5100 on WIndows 7 64bit, and not had any problems (yet).

 

I have a hardware switch on my little Fujitsu, so that is the first thing I looked for. There is none on the M6400 and this was confirmed by the Dell tech. Also, thought there might be a switch using the function keys, but nothing has shown up.

Unless someone has a better idea, I will probably try pulling the 5300 out tonight, clearing out the driver and then reinstalling. If that doesn't work, I guess I will try reinstalling the 1397. If that works, it means the problem is a failed 5300 card. Hate going into the hardware again, with its risk of screwing something else up.

 

No - there *is* a hardware switch on the M6400. On the right-hand side of the chasis.
See here:
(Setup & quick refence, About your computer, Front View, Item 11)

 

Thank you very much for being smarter than this old man. Goes to show you:
1. When you have a problem, the first thing to do is RTFM!
2. I may be a dumb senior citizen, but the STUPID Dell technician that spent an hour connected to my laptop after telling me that, "there is no hardware wireless switch on the M6400", really takes the cake!!!!!

I now try to, at least, check the switch when I get home tonight. Hopefully, it is off and turning it on solves the problem.

Thx again

 

No worries good sir!

 

I am also experiencing this problem after updating to the latest driver for the intel wifi 5100 AGN. I hope someone can give me the previous driver for this wireless card because the current driver must have a problem with windows 7.

UPDATE: I have tried rolling back the driver to the previous one I had on the system (12.4.0.21) but it was not able to resolve the issue. I think it might have to do with the new BIOS update (A09) or Windows & itself

Troubleshooting the adapter, I get the following message: Windows couldn't automatically bind the IP Protocol Stack to the Network Adapter