Dell WiFi upgrade, wireless connection disabled!

After upgrading the wifi card in a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop running Vista Business SP2 the Wireless Network Connection is shown as Disabled and cannot be enabled. The laptop wireless switch is on, although the WiFi LED flashes about once every four seconds (because the connection is disabled?).

I had un-installed Intel PRO/Wireless and Intel 3945ABG PCI express mini card and installed Gigabyte GN-WS30N-RH 802.11n card and latest Gigabyte drivers and utility. I have also tried the Gigabyte drivers only, and after Gigabyte uninstall the latest RaLink (chipset manufacturer) drivers. All have the same problem.

In all cases the GN-WS30N-RH drivers/utility install ok. In Device Manager the GN-WS30N-RH card is listed as working properly. The network connection does not appear in ipconfig, but my Broadcom wired Ethernet diagnostics utility can see the MAC address of the WiFi card.

I booted into Ubuntu to verify the card, and the GN-WS30N-RH is recognized and works. It can scan my available wireless networks. So it does not appear to be a hardware issue. I also do not think the BIOS locks out other WiFi cards.

Any suggestions on what I do next? This was supposed to be a great card that works in Vista, but I cannot figure this one out.

 

Do you have any Dell utilities installed that are managing the wireless networks?

I have to say though...using a card other than Intel or Dell, you are looking for trouble...an Intel 4965 AGN isn't that expensive, but I guess it's too late unless you can return the one you got.

 

Argh.

Suggestion #1
In Ubuntu I would:
# sudo rfkill list
Check if its hard/soft blocked.
Then,
# sudo rmmod dell_laptop
# sudo modprobe iwlagn
Reboot into Vista and see if the changes stick.

Suggestion #2
Run cmd.exe under administrator
Type ipconfig -all (or ipconfig /all).
Tell us what you see

Suggestion #3
Boot into BIOS
I believe the Vostro comes with a WiFi switch.
Disable the wifi activation switch; this means the WiFi will always be on.
The switch may not interface correctly with the new card, better to bypass it completely.

 

Thanks for the replies. The issue turned out to be Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS) 2010. I had to uninstall KIS, install the wireless drivers, then re-install KIS. Installing the wireless drivers when KIS was already installed did not work. I discovered this because disabling the KIS NDIS layer in the Wireless network properties allowed the WiFi to work. Maybe there was some KIS configuration setting I could have changed, but I could not see anything. Re-install worked.

I choose a non-Intel card because Intel WiFi drivers and Vista do not seem to play as nicely together. This particular card was reported in other forums to work really well in Vista (and Linux).

Now WiFi works perfectly every time, is fast, the Vostro WiFi switch does turn the WiFi on/off (but the catcher does not work). KIS works. I choose to use the Gigabyte installer and installed drivers only, letting Vista manage the wireless connection.

 

As far as I know, Intel WiFi drivers didn't have any problems with Vista or Windows 7...majority of them are included with Windows out of the box too.

But...glad you got it working.

 

I disagree. The previous WiFi card was an Intel 3945ABG and the Vista drivers were horrible. Failure to connect, keep the connection up etc. This is a known problem with the software drivers (many other forum posts from other owners). The actual card works fine under XP and Linux, it is only an issue on Vista. Based on that experience I did not want to try a different Intel card with basically the same drivers under Vista.

 

I've had two D620's with the 3945 running Vista and no problems. It's possible that Windows Update might have pushed out an update that fixed it, but there were no user complaints about the wireless card from either system.

 

Interesting. I was using the latest Intel PROset drivers directly from the Intel website. No amount of configuration changes made any difference. And there are many posts about similar issues. Wonder what the root cause was? Not that I really care now since I have a working system upgraded to 802.11n for $40.

 

I agree with Robin24k. I managed a whole bunch of D620s with 3495s running Vista with no issues. I always used the Dell driver though.

 

I had tried the Dell driver too. Maybe it was an interaction between the chipset and the WiFi driver? That would make it somewhat model specific. Thanks for all your comments.