My Wireless 1390 Card is Horribly Unsatisfactory

Hi, I am using my almost one month old Vostro 1500 and to date one component in it has made me somewhat disgusted with the whole package. The wireless card has caused so many problems on my system it must either be Dell's way to screw anyone who got a good deal on a notebook or just a product that was rushed through quality control.

Basically, when the card is off my 1500 runs amazingly, but when the wireless is switched on, the notebook turns to the most defective peice of garbage I've ever owned. The wireless switch actually acts like a "make notebook crappy" switch.

When on, the wireless signal is acquired and either hangs on authentication or actually achieves the "connected" status. Either way, 7 times out of 10 everything on my notebook is unusable for the next 5 minutes (unless it is already running). When I say 5 minutes, its not a figure of speech, its actually 5*60 seconds. I can double click on whatever I want, try to shut down the notebook or put it in standby, anything, will not perform unless I watch the screen for at least 5 minutes. More often than not, I am better off shutting down the notebook by holding the power button for 5 seconds than to wait. Then, sometimes, maybe 2 out of 10 times I am using wireless, I lose connection altogether, and the status hangs on "authenticating" leaving me with an undetermined amount of time to save my stuff before I get a BSOD claiming that IRQ_IS_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

I have tried my best to prevent these events from happening but now I can no longer take it. I have already uninstalled and reinstalled all the networking component drivers and the Dell wireless management utilities. I even tried managing wireless with the Windows compnents and no luck.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions? If I asked Dell to fix this, would they have to take my notebook away from me?

Thanks,
Mike.

 

IRQ not less or equal errors are generally related to drivers. If you have already installed the latest drivers from Dell's support site, you may want to ask Dell if you can get a replacement for the wireless card.

 

Will such a replacement be mailed to me or do I have to send in my notebook?

 

It depends on Dell's policy. A lot of companies are willing to do cross shipments (send you a replacement and have you send back the old one), and a lot are not.