Wireless Internet Issues

Zeich's laptop recently has been having major problems lately. It's a Dell, go figure. First his connection to the internet kept dropping every now and then before disappearing altogether (while mine was still going strong), then he started having big issues with things like missing text and menus that wouldn't open. After being unable to find any solutions to these errors via my computer, he opted to just have me go in to save his important documents and do a clean reinstall. We've got it all booted up and back to square one with a lot less clutter, got all the updates and drivers via an ethernet cable, but for some reason, he STILL is unable to access the internet via his laptop's WiFi. We made absolute sure to upgrade the drivers for his adapter, and it in fact does recognize our router's access point, but it simply won't connect to it (or any of our neighbors routers) no matter what we try to do.

I'm beginning to suspect that it's a hardware issue more than anything else, since it sounds like a so-so network adapter. He's got an internal Intel WiFi Link 5100 AGN, meaning that replacement may be difficult even if it's the only solution. So I guess my questions for any techies out there are these:

• Is there any thing we might be able to do to restore connection with the card? We have tried about every recommendation we've found so far without any success, but there might be something simple that we've missed.
• If there is no way to avoid needing a replacement, should we go with a card of the same exact type or go with a different one that will still be compatible with his laptop? I know very minimal about network cards and such.
• If we go with a different card than what he already has in his laptop, what should we look to get? We're on a serious budget, but this is pretty damn important.

Any help offered will be greatly appreciated.

Ech. If your BIOS has been set to allow wireless and your firewall is allowing wireless connections then the integrated network card has departed. Screw Intel anyway.   If that's the case, you have two options.

First, you can buy a new internal network card. Chances are you can get one for $50 USD. To install it, you'd need to pry open the case, remove the shit card and install the new one- you'd need to know if the socket inside is PCI, PCIe, or AGP. The new cards have the type printed on the box.

Laptops are not my forte, so I cant tell you exactly how that would be done- I imagine it's the same as a desktop, but you violate Dell's shitty warranty and it's fiddly in there.

OR you could buy a USB network adapter. For the same 50 - 100 USD you can simply plug a device into your USB port and install some drivers and viola, you're sailing the digital seas once again. No shit, that's all there is to it.

This assumes you're not using all of your USB ports for something else.

These devices come in both wireless and ethernet cable versions- that's right, a usb to ethernet cable adapter. I have faith in cables myself, but it's your choice.

As far as types, your only real concern is protocols and that should be handled by the architecture. If in doubt, look for the product's protocol listing. If you see 802.11 then you're good; otherwise you're probably looking at a bluetooth protocol and I'm afraid I'm of no use there.

Heavily modified to sound like English.

Zy, the only other thing I could think of, would be to log into the router and check the settings on there. I had an issue once in our CISCO class that turned out to have an issue with the router blocking a particular computer through one of the settings. Other than that, I would agree that a USB adapter might be your best bet.

Please post your current wireless security settings along with the make and model of each of the wifi doodads with issues.

Certain settings will basically screw with older/newer devices because they just hate each other.

2 weeks ago I was having the exact same problem you are describing after reviving my use of my stupidly expensive router.