Jeremiah's Music Blog: Dell Inspiron E1705 Wifi Trouble

Dell Inspiron E1705 Wifi Trouble

This is just a brain-dump post; no relevance other than to archive this solution and hope it helps others.

This is for owners of Dell Inspiron series notebooks that ship with the Dell Wlan 1390 wifi. There is a mandatory patch for this hardware that I recommend downloading and applying before continuing.

If you have the problem of:

A) Unable to detect/connect to a wireless network,
B) Windows reports a connection, but your web browser will not find sites,
C) The wireless connection drops intermittently
D) Connectivity speeds are slow ...

....then here's a simple and quick fix: set your wireless router to use Channel 11. I've tested this with a Linksys WRT54G and a recent Netgear model.

After changing your router's channel, reconnect to the network and you should be fine.

In some cases, you may not have access to network devices, or to anyone who can change the configuration. Until Dell can issue a fix (or replace your notebook's hardware), some Inspiron owners will have to live with occasional difficulty with their wireless network connectivity.

UPDATE: Dell Technical Support informs me this behavior is by-design. Dell Inspiron products (for home users) will only connect to wifi's on channels 6, 9, and 11. Dell claims these channels are less susceptible to interference, resulting in more reliable connectivity.

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Posted by Jeremiah at December 27, 2006 02:09 AM | Tag This Post | Digg It!