DELL INSPIRON 8500 WLAN FAILS

[Frederick]

I am installing XP SP3 fresh on this laptop. I think it has a Dell
TrueMobile 1300 so-called Mini-PCI card. Device Manager>Network
Adapters shows that this is so, and says it is working. However
wireless does not work - setup 'cannot find a wireless in range - my
router is within 5 feet.

In an effort to make wireless work, I went to old faithful
DriverAgent and found that it says I need a driver for Broadcom 440X
Integrated Controller. I downloaded and installed the R164285
driver. Immediately I got an obnoxious, perpetually repeating error
for BCMWLTRY.EXE and WLTRAY.EXE. I could not get rid of the
danged error messages. I uninstalled Broadcom in Control Panel. I
removed all occurrences of the two files from c drive. Finally when I
erased said files from the Registry, the error went away. So much for
Broadcom.

Now I am back to square one. Wireless still fails. DriverAgent has
flagged the Dell TrueMobile as faulty (yellow) even tho Device Manager
does not. I tried one driver download, but it is still the same.

I am wondering if the wireless card itself is bad. Can some test tell
me that?

Thanks

Big Fred

 

[Frederick]

I am installing XP SP3 fresh on this laptop. I think it has a Dell
TrueMobile 1300 so-called Mini-PCI card. Device Manager>Network
Adapters shows that this is so, and says it is working. However
wireless does not work - setup 'cannot find a wireless in range - my
router is within 5 feet.

In an effort to make wireless work, I went to old faithful
DriverAgent and found that it says I need a driver for Broadcom 440X
Integrated Controller. I downloaded and installed the R164285
driver. Immediately I got an obnoxious, perpetually repeating error
for BCMWLTRY.EXE and WLTRAY.EXE. I could not get rid of the
danged error messages. I uninstalled Broadcom in Control Panel. I
removed all occurrences of the two files from c drive. Finally when I
erased said files from the Registry, the error went away. So much for
Broadcom.

Now I am back to square one. Wireless still fails. DriverAgent has
flagged the Dell TrueMobile as faulty (yellow) even tho Device Manager
does not. I tried one driver download, but it is still the same.

I am wondering if the wireless card itself is bad. Can some test tell
me that?

Thanks

Big Fred

I looked at the wireless card and found it said Broadcom BCM4306MP REV
4. Based on that, I found, downloaded, and installed the driver for
this card. It seemed to install okay, without the earlier Broadcom
calamities.

Now I have a Broadcom icon on the task bar, which says 'radio is
disabled' and gives opportunity to enable it, which I tried. I
immediately got an error that the WLAN card is disabled and that I
should press Fn-F2 or slide the Wireless Switch to ON. I don't find
the latter on this 8500. Fn-F2 seems to do nothing, although it began
to beep once when I persisted in pressing F2.

BTW, before anyone asks, the my wireless router is working just fine
with a desktop in the house that has a wireless adapter.

So now what? Anyone?

Thanks

Big Fred

 

[Frederick]

Does the card show as enabled in Network Connections?

I think so -

Address type Assigned by DHCP
IP Address 192.168.1.5
Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server 192.168.1.1

etc

Did you notice if the black and white antenna leads were securely
fastened to the wi-fi card?

I thought they were.

Thanks
Big Fred

 

[Frederick]

Does the card show as enabled in Network Connections?

Cancel that! I forgot that I had a CAT5 connection hard-wired to the
laptop so I could at least bring the laptop up on the web and on my
LAN. So - the info in my last post came from that icon under Network
Connections. Sometimes I can be stupidly dumb.

Anyway the wireless icon has a red X, and when I try to choose a
wireless network, it says no wireless networks can be found in range.
this despite the fact that a nearby desktop is currently connected
wireless and working to the same router.

Big Fred the Dumbee

 

[Frederick]

If it has a red x, it's enabled, but not connected to a network. You
can confirm that by right-clicking the icon--you should see a "Disable"
menu item which indicates it's currently enabled.

That is the case.

If the antennas were disconnected, or perhaps broken, I don't know if
the driver would indicate that they were disabled. My recollection is
that it just has incredibly poor reception in that scenario.

At any rate, I would still confirm that the antennas are firmly seated
on the card. Lots of Inspiron 8500s were sold with Wi-fi and a card was
installed later. Getting those tiny antenna connectors to snap on the
card is sort of a challenge.

I agree. I went to the trouble of unsnapping the connections, and
then re-snapping them securely. No effect.

Also, I would boot the machine up with a linux live cd. It should be
able to spot your wireless card. If you can see your network, then it's
a decent bet that your problem on windows is strictly software.

I only have a Ubuntu Live CD. I've not used it for some time. When
I just did, it came up in a command window in which I entered
https://help.ubuntu.com/
It said no such file or directory.

Big Fred

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

That is the case.


I agree. I went to the trouble of unsnapping the connections, and
then re-snapping them securely. No effect.

I only have a Ubuntu Live CD. I've not used it for some time. When
I just did, it came up in a command window in which I entered
https://help.ubuntu.com/
It said no such file or directory.

Big Fred

I'd try downloading the Lucid Puppy distribution and give that a try.
It was able to recognize and use the wireless card in my Lenovo laptop
while the regular Puppy Linux did not. The iso file is relatively small
and there are even loaders on some sites that will put it on a USB flash
drive for those who don't want to burn a CD.

http://www.puppylinux.com/download/

As Grinder has said if it works then the problem is most likely with an
as of yet undiscovered problem with the Windows system/drivers, if not
then it's about 95% hardware related

One hardware related problem I've run into in the past was when a laptop
did not have a switch to turn on/off the radio. A replacement card had a
header that had to be bridged with a jumper so that the card would
ignore the missing on/off button and associated wires that went to that
jumper.

 

[Frederick]

Ubuntu's Live CD has been geared to fire up a graphical interface for
quite awhile, I wonder how old yours is. At any rate, burn a current
one if you like, and select "Try it without altering my hard drive"--or
whatever is close to that from the boot menu.

From there, there should be some network options along the top edge of
the screen. It's entirely possible, of course, that the live cd will
not figure out the drivers for your wireless card, even if it's in
proper working order.

I see there are WLAN cards to replace mine available on Ebay. Fairly
cheap too. In view of all that I am experiencing, do you guys think
I should try a replacement card?

Thanks


Big Fred

 

[Frederick]

Ubuntu's Live CD has been geared to fire up a graphical interface for
quite awhile, I wonder how old yours is. At any rate, burn a current
one if you like, and select "Try it without altering my hard drive"--or
whatever is close to that from the boot menu.

From there, there should be some network options along the top edge of
the screen. It's entirely possible, of course, that the live cd will
not figure out the drivers for your wireless card, even if it's in
proper working order.

I made my version of Ubuntu Live CD when I got a DELL netbook from
my daughter a few months back. Ubuntu worked fine, but I decided to
go with XP instead, which worked fine. Now I am using the same CD
with this laptop and it sits hung at the WELCOME window which says to
TRY UBUNTU OR INSTALL UBUNTU. I chose the former, but alas, it sits,
hung doing something as evidenced by a wild cursor or something..

Oh well

Big Fred

 

[Frederick]

From there I would probably try pulling the Wi-fi card and seeing if
Ubuntu can load. If that's the case, I would start to suspect there is
problem with that card--not just software.

I couldn't do any more yesterday, as we had a long power outage. This
AM I retried my Ubuntu Live CD, but this time with a CAT5 cable
hard-wired to my wireless router. Ubuntu came up!

I had two choices - try Ubuntu or install Ubuntu. Naturally I tried
the former.

I get a menu which includes 'network'. When I selected it, it
displays an icon for 'Windows Network'. it shows an error - 'Unable
to Mount Location' and 'Failed to retrieve share list from server'.
So, that's as far as I can get. I could not find a selection to allow
me to try a web address such as for Ubuntu helps.

Does all this tell you anything?

Thanks

Big Fred

 

[Paul]

I couldn't do any more yesterday, as we had a long power outage. This
AM I retried my Ubuntu Live CD, but this time with a CAT5 cable
hard-wired to my wireless router. Ubuntu came up!

I had two choices - try Ubuntu or install Ubuntu. Naturally I tried
the former.

I get a menu which includes 'network'. When I selected it, it
displays an icon for 'Windows Network'. it shows an error - 'Unable
to Mount Location' and 'Failed to retrieve share list from server'.
So, that's as far as I can get. I could not find a selection to allow
me to try a web address such as for Ubuntu helps.

Does all this tell you anything?

Thanks

Big Fred

In this example, the driver appears to already have been resolved.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1577270

Here, they make it look like the driver wasn't available, so had
to be acquired separately.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/51197/how-do-i-setup-my-ubuntu-on-a-wifi-network?amp

If you use ifconfig, with no arguments, it shows network interfaces
that have already been detected. There might be a number of them.
"lo" is loopback, and is likely always available (and useless).
"eth0" is a wired Ethernet interface. If you have more than
one Ethernet chip, then you'd have "eth1" as well. "wlan0"
appears to be what shows when a wireless setup is present.

Programs like "dhclient", execute dhcp protocol, to get a
LAN address from the router.

Programs like "lspci", list hardware on the bus. From that,
you can see things like your Wifi. "lspci --help" will show
you options to make the command more verbose.

With a little search engine effort, you're bound to find
more Ubuntu tutorials.

I thought at one time, they were using Windows NDIS files,
as a means to make networking work in Ubuntu. But I don't
know if they still do that. This is when you have some
Wifi that doesn't have drivers, but you happen to have
a copy of a Windows driver for the Wifi.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper

Paul

 

[Frederick]

I went to terminal window in Ubuntu and entered 'nm-tool' as stated in

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessTroubleShootingGuide

and it returned with 'error: could not connect to NetworkManager'.

What does that say about my Broadcom Wlan card? Anything?

Thanks

Big Fred

 

[Frederick]

I am beginning to think that wireless adapters are surely one of the
most obscure pieces of computer hardware that I have messed around
with. The deeper I get, the more confusing the picture gets. This is
frustrating because without wireless, a laptop is useless. To me
anyway.

As things stand right now -

1) I added a Texas Instruments PCI-4510 card buss controller to the
Dell 8500's PCI modem slot, together with the necessary PCMCIA driver.
Device Manager shows it under PCMCIA adapters as functioning
correctly. Yet I still cannot get the laptop to connect wireless to
my router. This means that neither the PCMCIA card nor the internal
Dell TrueMobile 1300 WLAN Mini-PCI card will connect to the router.

2) I got nowhere trying to get Ubuntu on this same laptop to connect
wireless .

3) I went back and double-checked that my XP desktop that used to
connect wireless using a Atheros AR5008 Wireless Network PCI Adapter
still does. Lo, now it does not.

4) Suspecting that maybe, just maybe, my router's wireless component
is the culprit, I pulled out a Dell notebook that I have (with XP on
it) to verify that it still connects to the router. It does. I
pulled out an old Toshiba Satellite A705 laptop with a Atheros
AR5004 wireless network adapter to verify the same. It does. So
much for that thought.

I know not what to try next.

Big Fred

 

[Frederick]

Have you verified you can see the hardware ?

Oh yes.

I have exposed the card, and it indeed is there. with the two wires
seemingly properly connected.

Does "lspci" show the thing ? What bus is it connected to ?
Is it USB based or PCI based ? There is also a "lsusb"
command, for listing USB bus devices.

Someone here with an 8500, had no Wifi card present. The
owner could find the two antenna leads, but no mini-card
to connect them to.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/network-internet-wireless/f/3324/t/17613312.aspx

The hatch to open, is shown here.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins8500/en/8500/sm/upgrades.htm#999869

This shows the mini-PCI card, and the two antenna leads.
Be careful with the connectors on the antenna leads, not
to damage them. If they're connected to the card, leave
them in place.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins8500/en/8500/sm/upgrade3.jpg

I would start with verification that there is hardware present.
Remove the battery, to make it safe to work on the hardware in
there. (I.e. If adding or removing the mini-PCI card, you do
that with the main battery removed.)

Dell frequently has some kind of diagnostic software,
and perhaps that can verify there is Wifi present and
switched on.

'Switched on' may be the most important consideration.
I need to determine that.

 

[Paul]

Oh yes.

I have exposed the card, and it indeed is there. with the two wires
seemingly properly connected.



'Switched on' may be the most important consideration.
I need to determine that.

Even if the radio portion of the module is switched off,
the MAC chip (the exposed one) should still appear on the
bus. And things like Ubuntu drivers and "nm-tool" should
still be able to see it.

It's possible to cut any chip off the bus (just disconnect
chip select), but they don't generally do it that way. It's
easier to leave the MAC running, and just disable the radio
portion.

If you lack entertainment, there are also options to run
the laptop Wifi in "sniffing" mode. In Windows, that would be
"netstumbler". See if your Ubuntu (Synaptic Package Manager)
has one of these. It's suggested this is a rough Linux
equivalent. Naturally, it still needs to access the hardware,
so some parts of the solution are unavoidable. But if you
can't get regular wireless running, this would be a starting
point in testing.

http://www.kismetwireless.net/documentation.shtml

Paul