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HELP: Wireless stopped connecting

post #1 of 12
7/30/10 at 6:52am
Thread Starter 
Hello friends,

I have an Alienware M17x

I stopped playing a game the other night and turned off my laptop as usual and went to sleep. I then woke up and fancied a game of Company of Heroes Multiplayer. So I turned on my PC as usual, and opened up the connetions thing on the task bar and connected to my router, as I have been doing sucessfully for the past month.

but guess what. "WINDOWS WAS UNABLE TO CONNECT"
I'm at witts end with this.

I have restarted laptop 50+ times.
I have turned off wifi security and tested
I have reset my router to factory settings
I have reinstalled and updated new drivers for my wireless card

I have tired everything... I am starting to think my wireless card just died over night... yet this doesnt make sense because it can detect the wifi points... althought it does seem to be MUCH less signal strength then before.

I am not a computer hardware expert, althought I am a computer programmer, so I have some experiance with it all, just never been into the whole hardware scene - Could my wireless card antenna be broken? Does it even have 1?

Thanks for reading this guys, and I hope someone can help me... I dont want to have to call up alienware and have to send my laptop off for repair... I have uni in 1 month and I prob wouldnt have it back by then would I?

My router is a Belkin
My wifi card is an Broadcom 802.11n.. or is now, its name has changed on Device manager since I updated the drivers...

PS: My laptop internet works fine with an ethernet cable plugged in... that's what I'm using right now

Thanks guys, I do hope someone can help me, I would love them forever if they can fix this problem or have some ideas to whats wrong...

Matthew.
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post #2 of 12
7/30/10 at 7:35am
Your com Model Matthew? What about checking the wireless switch and possible of FN key combination to turn the wifi on?

cheers ...
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post #3 of 12
7/30/10 at 7:43am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qhn View Post
Your com Model Matthew? What about checking the wireless switch and possible of FN key combination to turn the wifi on?

cheers ...
Alienware M17x - sorry, i should of included that.

I dont think it has a WIFI switch.. unless im missing something rly simple here.

and what FN combination?

matt.
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post #4 of 12
7/30/10 at 7:48am
Fn combination: you hold down the FN key and hit whatever F key above to activate certain aspect of the hardware.

cheers ...
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post #5 of 12
7/30/10 at 9:43am
It's actually on the powerbar.

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post #6 of 12
7/30/10 at 10:24am
Thread Starter 
as I feared, it was already enabled.

the problem isnt that no wireless points show up, thats fine, I can see my router on the list, its just when I connect to it, it just takes 10 seconds then sais "Windows could not connect to BELKIN3535" ... it has been fine for past 2 months and 1 morning it does this.... Im worried my wireless card cud be broken...

any ideas lads?

matt
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post #7 of 12
7/30/10 at 1:14pm
did you try connecting to another wireless AP, or another wireless device to your AP? Need to make sure if its the device or the router.

My dlink 655 ran fine for 3 years. Last week, in the middle of the day, all LAN ports and the WAN ports just stopped working. Wireless was good but the WAN port was gone so couldnt use the internet. Replaced with a netgear 3700.
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post #8 of 12
7/30/10 at 5:59pm
try updating the drivers
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post #9 of 12
6/21/11 at 9:37am

Not sure if you ever solved this...I started experiencing this issue with my M17x and support was no help. Found this solution online so its a copy/paste from there:

 

Guide to properly solve M17x wireless connection problems
by Glzmo


Since many new Alienware M17x All Powerful users, especially those using Windows 7 as their operating system are experiencing various problems with their wireless connection and are posting threads asking how to fix them over and over again, I've decided to write this guide to show them how to properly solve these common issues. The solutions in this guide have been created and designed for Windows 7 64 bit, but they may also work in Windows Vista, although these problems have been experienced by Windows 7 users in the past.

I. Can't connect to wireless Network and or see the Wireless Adapter when the Ethernet cable is unplugged
If you sometimes or always can't connect to the wireless network, can't connect to the wireless network when the Ethernet cable is unplugged, can't connect to a wireless network unless you reboot once to get it working and other bizarre problems with being unable to connect to a wireless network, continue with section I.a..

I.a. Disable Device sleep on disconnect
Newer Nvidia Ethernet drivers have a feature called Device sleep on disconnect. This is the culprit. Normally, it should only put the Ethernet adapter to sleep when the cable is disconnected, but it's buggy and thus kills the wireless connection as well.
Follow these steps to disable this feature on your Nvidia Ethernet Adapter:
1. Open the Windows Device Manager by hitting Win+Pause, then click on Device Manager on the left side.
2. Double-click on Network adapters.
3. Double-click on NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller (yes, that's the wired Ethernet adapter indeed).
4. Click on the Advanced tab.
5. Select Device sleep on disconnect.
6. Set the Value to Disabled. 
7. Click OK and wireless should work again (might require a reboot afterwards, but probably not).

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post #10 of 12
8/2/12 at 10:07am

YES!!! Thanx, this been bothering me for a long time. Damn Alienware!

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post #11 of 12
9/26/12 at 6:43pm

Im using an atheros AR8151 PCI-E gigabit ethernet controller instead of the NVIDIA. I have no sleep on disconnect option. My wireless toggle switch on my m17X laptop doesnt even work. are there any FN keys to toggle it? this sucks lol

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post #12 of 12
9/27/12 at 1:48pm
Doesn't it have its own Wireless Manager Tool?

cheers ...
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