DCAWD.com

Ok.....I know better, but, I updated drivers on my Alienware M17x today. I haven't touched it since I bought it over a year ago. Most notably, I wanted to get the latest driver for the GTX260M video card in it. Everything went fine. Except the wireless.

This thing has always been spotty on wireless connectivity...perhaps because of the density of radio signals in/around Leesburg whether 802.11 stuff or the Feds (FAA, etc).

Here's the weird thing...when plugged in via an RJ45, the wireless connects fine on its own. When unplugged from a hard cable, it drops. Then, the wireless utility can't re-connect; it doesn't find ANY networks. Sitting 3ft from the router, it should. I've updated the driver Dell recommends for the wireless (a Broadcom wifi NIC). Still no dice. I had the problem BEFORE doing that but AFTER updating the Nvidia chipset stuff that updated the 10/100/1000 ethernet NIC (not the dedicated video update).

What the hell? I suppose I can uninstall the nvidia tools that seemed to get loaded but they also control the basic video functions in addition to the hard NIC. Suggestions?

<----- moved all docs off to my NAS and am getting ready to blast this machine clean and reformat with dual SSD's in a RAID config if I can't figure it out.

which wireless management utility are you using? windows stock or something else?

i know some dell machines have the ability to toggle the state of wireless dependent upon the state of the wired nic. (great to disable wireless nic when folks plug in to your wired network)

i agree that most dell stuff works better with the generic broadcom drivers vs their dell driver package.

anything funky show up in the event logs? hardware errors or such?

Win 7 64 bit and using whatever is loaded. Its very strange...gonna try and uninstall the nVidia tool....not sure its needed. That seems to be the culprit. Its like it won't let the wireless work normally. When the hard cable is not plugged in, no networks are visible. as soon as I plug in the RJ45 its like the wireless is activated. I don't see anything in the settings for that tool that are causing a conflict. The Device Manager shows that the wNIC is operating normally and that the driver is the latest available. Confirmed the version # is the one from the recent update I did, after things stopped working.

that's just weeeahhhd.

i'm typically all for letting windows manage individual devices (the lone exception being the video card) simply because they know it'll have to interact with other devices on the same system.

buena suerte.

uninstalled the nVidia "ForceWare" app. Reboot, Repent. Order was not restored. Cripes.

PGT wrote:uninstalled the nVidia "ForceWare" app. Reboot, Repent. Order was not restored. Cripes.

well, color me fucking impressed. Windows 7 couldn't fix the issue through the troubleshooter but it did suggest I roll back to a restore point. Tried a point earlier today before that nVidia tool was done (W7 thought it was the culprit too) but no dice. Rolled back to a restore point at 3am during a Windows update and I'm back online via WiFi.

Seriously, why did it take until Win7 to get this feature? Can't tell you how many machines I've had to wipe clean b/c of bad updates.