Wireless card or something else?
I suddenly lost comunication with my network. I have a Dell Laptop (Inspiron E1505 with XPpro SP2) with a Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN mini-card. For no reason I can figure out I suddenly can't get online or communicate with the Network. In my troubleshooting at one point I had an IP address, a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 and nothing for the default gateway. Now I just get "Media disconnected".
In my problem solving I have discovered these things:
I cannot ping anything from the laptop.
If I do ipconfig it says "media disconnected".
I tried ipconfig/renew and release but it says no operation can be performed on the LAN while it's media is diconnected.
Somehow or another (I can't remember where I was I was able to "test" and it said everyhting was functioning was properly.
Under Network connections it says "not connected". If I try to repair it fails and says it can't connect to the wireless network.
To be honest I do not even know where the wirelss card is to see if there are lights on or not.
Any input appreciated. I am a relative newbie so please be specific with your advice and steps. Thanks!! (you guys BTW saved me from an inital network setup problem that hours on Tech support didn't even come close to being helpful!)
In my problem solving I have discovered these things:
I cannot ping anything from the laptop.
If I do ipconfig it says "media disconnected".
I tried ipconfig/renew and release but it says no operation can be performed on the LAN while it's media is diconnected.
Somehow or another (I can't remember where I was I was able to "test" and it said everyhting was functioning was properly.
Under Network connections it says "not connected". If I try to repair it fails and says it can't connect to the wireless network.
To be honest I do not even know where the wirelss card is to see if there are lights on or not.
Any input appreciated. I am a relative newbie so please be specific with your advice and steps. Thanks!! (you guys BTW saved me from an inital network setup problem that hours on Tech support didn't even come close to being helpful!)
0
Comments
2) Turn your router off
3) Wait 2 minutes
4) Turn your router on
5) Wait 1 minute
6) Turn your computer on
7) Go into Control Panel>Network Connections find your Wireless Network Adapter
8) Check the status, it should either say Connected, Disconnected or Disabled.
9) If it's Disabled right click on it and choose Enabled.
10) If it's Connected or Disconnected right click on it and choose View Available Wireless Networks
11) It'll bring up a view of available wireless networks, look to see if yours is in the list
12) If it is select yours and choose connect.
If yours isn't in the list there are 2 reasons. 1) Your router is set to not broadcast it's SSID. This isn't a default setting so it's something that was enabled. If you know the SSID you can manually create a new wireless network. But you'll have to know all of your routers wireless settings to create it 2) It could be that your routers wireless settings have been disabled.
That's the basics assuming nothing is *really* wrong
If that doesn't cover your issue then more trouble shooting needs to be done.
- I can get the newtwork/internet via hardwired computers.
- I have not shut the router off (I'll try when I get to the office)
-If I go to the Newtwork conections is says "disconected". If I try to connect or repair connection it fails.
- I can go the list of local networks/broadcasting routers, find mine, try and connect and it fails (that is also with all firewalls off).
I'm a little confused though about why that worked. It had to be the router because I re-stared the laptop several times without success. What was changed?
As Leonardo mentioned sometimes they just need to be rebooted. General causes are that they get overloaded and need to be flushed with a reboot. This is more common on home routers that have several users connected to them or a few, but very active (peer to peer) traffic users.