Dell Inspiron 5720 wireless issues

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 12:42 pm

My wife has a Dell Inspiron 5720 laptop, and she is having the wireless connection drop. I have other laptops and even phones that have no problems connecting. Just this morning, she had to reboot it 5 times to get the connection back. She is running windows 7, and my question is: is the laptop using the Dell wireless application to connect or is it using the windows?

On my xp systems, I changed to using the windows wireless connection since I feel that is a better connection app than the Dell version.

GuardianAsher · Post by **GuardianAsher** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 1:08 pm

I've not run into a Dell Windows 7 machine that uses anything but the Windows Zero Config to get the wireless working... what I would suggest is download the newest wireless drivers for that card, then go to device manager and uninstall the current drivers, making sure to check the 'delete drivers for this device' option when you do. Or you can use the build in uninstaller from Programs and Features if there is one. Then install the new ones and see if it fixes it..

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 3:12 pm

I've had a lot of issues with wireless on Dell Laptops. Disconnection issues, failure to authenticate, mouse lag due to large file transfers over WLAN. I've also had issues with file transfers over Wifi making the Bluetooth mouse hang. That's because Dell chooses to use a card that handles both WLAN and BT. When I order laptops for clients from the Dell business division, I try to customize it with an Intel WLAN card instead of the default Dell card.

I would try uninstalling the driver then let Windows 7 find it's own generic driver. I find they tend to work better. You definitely want to stick the Win7's native wireless app.

I've noticed that most of the time it's an issue with the N band. N band can be a lot fussier. You can usually get a more reliable connection by forcing the WLAN card to connect using 802.11 G only. If you go into Device Manager and drill down into the advanced properties for the WLAN card, there's usually a setting to force B & G only.

The flip side is you could tell the router to only use B & G.

Unless you're transferring files across the wireless network, you just don't need N speeds. Wireless G is usually 10 - 20 times faster than your Internet connection speed.

Sometimes you just get a combination of a router that doesn't like a certain WLAN card (or vice-a-versa), or a bad WLAN card. At that point all you can do is buy a replacement WLAN card for the laptop. That laptop SHOULD have a PCI-E card, and if so this would be a good replacement:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833106062

It's easy to tell if you're using the Win7 wireless app. It show up as 5 bars in the taskbar and looks like this when it's open:

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 6:51 pm

Thanks for the great feedback on this issue. While googling, some recommended disabling the V6 version of IP which I did, as apparently it has issues with FIOS. It worked for hours until I decided to go on line and play a game.
http://www.fixya.com/support/t405292-ac ... n_problems

If it continues, I'll order the Intel card. Thanks again.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Tue Jan 01, 2013 6:22 am

Sometimes it is simply the driver, and some searching around might net you a decent result. Many of cases there are actually driver updates for Wireless adapters on Windows Update. You can also take the model of the wireless adapter and hunt for one from somewhere other than Dell.

From what I can tell, when there is a WLAN/BT combo adapter, the Atheros ones seem to have less issues than Intel ones.