M1330 Wireless connection poor (drops frequently)

Hello, I'm using M1330 with Dell wireless-n-mini with LED backlit screen. My problem is that even though it says the singal to my router is strong or excellent, it keeps droping my connection. Whenever I do direct dl or use heavy bandwidth apps, my wireless speed goes all over the place and I start to lose connection very frequently. Sometimes I'm unable to connect back to my own router, but after waiting a while it just reconnects and the whole cycle begins again. Does anyone have a solution to that?

 

What kind of router do you have? Does this happen on any wireless connection or only this specific one?

 

I have DLINK DIR-625 N-draft 2.0 router

I haven't tried wireless connection at school yet, I guess I'll test it out tomorrow and tell you what happens..

 

i have the same problem. when i use heavy bandwidth especially with torrents the connction would drop. Even if i disconnect from my wireless connection, it doesn't allow me to connect, i always have to restart my laptop or reconnect the router AC adapter.

 

I had your exact same problem, chiew. Turned out, it wasn't my M1330. My router, an ActionTec MI 424 WR, was the one dropping the connection. Had it replaced, I can do full DVD iso downloads with no problem. I really doubt it's the M1330, even if your situation isn't the exact same as mine. I use a lot of different access points through the day and the M1330's Wi-Fi is one thing you just can't complain about.

 

may I ask which router you're using?

I'm too busy to be bothered by wireless problems now... I'm using ethernet for backup but I'll be keeping an eye on this post and prolly call DLink next weekend.

 

Same here, very common problem. Not sure if it's Vista related or not. Windows begin to see the wireless radio as "off" even if the Wifi light is on. Takes a restart to fix this

 

well mine is a little different... sometimes it drops it completely and says I'm not connected to anywireless network and other times, it'd say I'm identified on the network just not let through to the internet.

 

are you using XP?

 

same problem here, it seems that the intel Wificard is making the router go ape****. I've also got an Inspiron 6400 and a Latitude 430, both have no networking problems with my router. As soon as the m1330 goes on the network the router goes bad and needs a reset

 

Both on Linux and Windows I'm having a problem where the speeds go way up and way down. In Linux I especially notice it when downloading updates, but on both OS's it happens even while browsing the web - where the page will load fast, and then sometimes just sit there for a while loading.

I'm using a linksys WRT54GL with the DD-WRT firmware and I've never had a problem like this on any other computers before.

 

Alright a little update here guys. I brought my laptop to school today and well there's a slgiht difference in the sense that my connections don't get dropped as much but it still goes crazy after a while. I've had my connection drop twice in 1 min. It drives me insane especially when I'm chatting on msn.

So far the only solution I've noticed is to keep your A/C adapter plugged in. This will allow your network card to use full power and you shouldn't drop as often. From what I can see here, it's not just an issue of Dell's wireless and it seems that even intel is having the same issue. I think it could be vista that's acting up or perhaps the way that power management controls the amount of power going into your wireless card?

Please note that I'm having issues on Windows VISTA 32 bit Home Premium edition.

 

I don't know how related our problems are but... I had the same issues using windows vista 32-bit (with ABG not N) but when I installed windows XP (which i intended to do anyways) all the problems were gone. I did a little googling and found some people that were having the same issues with Intel wireless cards and windows vista. It might just be due to poor driver support by intel for windows vista, im not an expert though.

 

I fixed the slow loading webpages with the latest driver for the wireless-n card off the dell.co.uk site

 

For the driver you're using when was it last updated?

Well the thing is, if I sit infront of my router with A/C plugged in I prolly won't go any slower than wired... the issue is no A/C plugged in and being away from the router for around 10-20 feet.

 

My Dell (Windows XP) would drop my connection to my wireless router (ActionTec) every 2 minutes until I clicked the "use Windows to configure my wireless network settings" box in Network Connection properties. (to expand range I'm using an external usb port Trendnet adapter)

I also ran into problems when my cordless phone base was too close to the router.

The ActionTec router is pretty awful from what I've been reading online.

 

i was experiencing the same problem at home with my linksys router (a really old wireless b router)

when I went to school (mcgill) i had no problems. On campus I stay connected walking around the field and I stay connected everywhere in rez.

this tells me that the problem was probably the router, not the computer or the card.

 

Well I'm sitting infront of my router right now and I got disconnected LOL... -_-"

 

To give a little bit of insight of my new discoveries. I've done testing on DLINK DIR-625 N-draft 2.0 router. The idea came when I was thinking about this "N-draft" thing and how compatibility issues can arise.

I began changing router wireless settings from N-draft only to a/b/g/n mixed mode. However, the effect remained the same and not much change was noticed. So then I thought of another problem with n-draft, "encryption system". I did a system scan around my area and saw that most people are running "G" connections with "WEP" encryption as to WPA so I thought "maybe if I try running WEP encryption things will work out". Indeed, right after changing the encryption settings to WEP 128 bit everything worked seamlessly with no disconnects. I'm still connected from that point around 2 hours ago.

Conclusion: The trade off? No solid N-specification settings. I spent 60 bucks to get this card upgraded to an "N" state and here I am using mixed modes (most likely it went on falling back to G) as N-draft specifications only allows WPA or higher encryption.

If you need to quickly solve this issue, here's a way out for you but disappointing as is, this proves that Dell's wireless cards may not be 100% n-draft 2.0 compatible (even though it says so). I come to this conclusion because my router is wifi-Alliance certified. It's been approved through vigorous testing and I've made sure my firmware for both router and dell's wireless card is up to date. Yet, this issue happens and judging with dell's built quality, I'm not surprised to see something like that happen.

I've messaged a tech support at Dell about this and he said he will send me a new wireless card, but I don't think that's the case as I've already solved the issue or at least isolated to a point where I'm 90% certain I am correct). We'll see how this goes.

 

Well, the Intel 4965AGN is Wi-Fi Certified...so maybe you should make sure you get that sent to you <_<

 

I chatted with a dell rep last night and he even saw this thread. So... he says he's going to send me a new bluetooth card along with a new dell wireless-n-mini card. I'll request for an intel card if that fails again.

 

Are you using the latest drivers? (dell drivers, not the vista ones?)

 

yes, the first thing I did when I reinstalled vista was go online with wired broadband and dl the latest wireless drivers. I have the latest firmware for my dlink router and the latest drivers for my wireless card installed

 

i will tell you what worked for me:
Use 156.xx Nvidia drivers rather than 163.xx
when on battery, powerplan needs to be on high performance, on the other 2 options i lose connections as well. since i did above, no more issues....

 

Well I haven't tried the nvidia drivers part.. but I doubt that video drivers will affect wireless connections. I did however, try to run on high power and indeed I don't lose connection as easily but it still drops so... I don't see it being hopeful. Also, this is kinda like the CPU whine issue where we have to do some downgrading as a trade off to elminate the issue. And this is the part where I'd get all emo and start screaming cause I didn't pay 2k to downgrade my video drivers or trade off battery life to fix problems that dell has. This is why I opted for a replacement of those 2 wireless cards. I'm going to talk to that rep and keep working at it till it resolves. I don't think I deserve to be in this kinda of bs when I waited long and paid a hefty price for it.

 

156.xx are currently more recent than the 163.xx ones
156.xx just includes mobile support. So i guess this does sometihng with powerdrainage which does not leave enough juice allocated for the antenna...

So going from 163 to 156 is certainly not a downgrade, but just using the mobile version....

 

What i also found out is that broadcom based consumer wireless routers, often do not like Intel centrino based clients

 

alright, you've convinced me. I'll go ahead and give it a try. Thanks.

Does it mean that 156.xx series is all mobile drivers only? 163 prolly drains more battery bug gives more performance


**EDIT***

163.xx series is more recent. According to laptopvideo2go.com the release date for 163.71 is Sept 17 while 156.xx series was last released on aug 23 2007

The only difference I'd say is the mobile support so it uses considerably less battery.

 

I was having the same problem with the intel N card. Tried everything and nothing worked. My connection would randomly drop, then reconnect itself a few minutes later.

After some researching, I changed my router setting from channel: auto to a set channel. I also changed from WPA2 TKIP to WPA2 AES. Made these changes last night and I haven't had a drop since.

 

Thanks for the tip. I'm gonna go try it right now.

**UPDATE**

good fix! It works! I haven't had connection dropped ever since either! Repped!

However, my network card says I'm connected at only 78mbps (max that I've gotten so far around 10-20 feet away from my router) where as under "mixed" settings with WEP encryption, I've had around 100 mbps and sometimes even 113 mbps =S

Does anyone find that n-draft is actually slower?