XPS 1645 - WIFI drops

Hi All,
I've have my XPS 1645 for a while now, and I've never had any problem with it. Lately, I checked in an hotel for 2 month (business trip) and I've been having problems with my WIFI connection that sometimes work and out of the blue it drops (still connected but no internet connectivity). It's an unsecured wireless AP, my other laptop works perfectly without any interruptions, so is my iPad and smartphone.

I tried, re-installing the driver from intel and dell, I tried in safe mode with networking, also tried rebooting/shutdown/sleep, removing the network and connecting again, turning wifi on/off.... nothing happens, it starts working whenever it wants and stops working whenever it wants.

Any ideas?

Note: it's an Intel WIFI 5300

 

Some hotels reset their wireless everyday; when I stayed at a Sheraton a few months ago, they always reset their wireless around 7pm and I had to go thru the hassle of reconfiguring again every day. Total pain in the @ss, especially if I was streaming video at the time

If your wireless keeps dropping out around the same time everyday, it's very likely the hotel

 

This hotel actually gives you the option of connecting for 1 month without the need to reconnect each 24 hours. The drops are more frequents like each 30 minutes (although not periodic).... Plus, all my other equipments (other laptop, phone, smartphone) doesn't have this problem... it's only my xps1645. I even asked a colleague in the same hotel. He never had this problem

 

Maybe your Wifi card is dying? I'm assuming you don't have another one on hand? I've never had an issue with an Intel wireless card.

 

It looks like it, I called Dell's support and they are sending me a new one, it should arrive today. I will replace it and see what happens

 

Another thing to try is to swap around the antennas... I bought my laptop second hand, and it obviously frustrated the previous owner to the point where he had purchased an external USB wireless...

I swapped the anntenas around - now it works perfectly!

Give it a shot if your new card doesn't work...

 

I've already replaced the new wifi card I've got from dell... It has been working for 10 hours non-stop so I assume it was a hardware problem (continuous ping tests...). I will wait for a couple of day before sending back the old one, just to be sure. The strange thing is that the wifi connectivity would not drop, only internet connectivity part of it drops.

On a side note, Dell's customer support has been amazing for me. It hardly took me 20 seconds to explain the situation and they directly said they are sending me a new card.

 

Well glad to hear Dell came through for you on this one. Sometimes it happens, defective things happen, that's why warranties exist. Never had an Intel WLAN card die on me though.