M4800 Owner's Thread

I hope you smart guys can steer me in the right direction. I *think* I have a problem with the Intel Proset wireless card...hopefully just a setting I should make.

Basically, I exchanged my first M4800 due to problems with the touchpad (which had a Dell wireless card) to this new M4800 that came with an Intel Proset. Got this replacement two days ago. Set up just fine out of the box. Joined my Homegroup...connected to the internet. Everything fine. Until the following day. It booted up just fine but couldn't get on the internet. It showed "unidentified network." It was no longer in my Homegroup but was on a public connection. It showed as being connected to my home network's profile but had a yellow exclamation as not having internet.

After "leaving" the Homegroup and then rejoining it, and after some checking of settings (notably advanced power settings...didn't allow it to turn off wireless connection when not in use, etc.), it got was able to get back on the internet.

Today it was working just fine. And while working in Word, noticed it was off the internet once again...out of the Homegroup...not able to connect. In Intel Proset software, I deleted my profile and started afresh. I added the profile anew. Still wouldn't connect. Then, instead of specifying that the WPA2 security code is WPA2-Personal (which it is), I just said it was WPA. Bam. It connected right away.

I don't know if this is the permanent solution to the connection problem. I obviously know squat about the Intel Proset software. I didn't have any of these problems with the old Dell wireless card. Do I need to replace this machine again...while I still have the chance? Or is it just some silly setting? I don't think wireless connection should be so difficult. The only settings I've made is change all power settings to not power down when not in use (did this also in Device Manager), the WPA designation instead of saying WPA2, and did check for it to connect automatically.

I hope I've not been too vague about this problem. I'm really upset about this, but I dread calling technical support and losing several hours of my life. I have to say the machine is *beautiful* otherwise. Really love it. But I can't be second-guessing this wireless problem all the time. If anyone can offer any guidance, I'd be beyond appreciative.

 

Sounds pretty odd. I have the Dell card, so I can't offer any info on the Intel card, although most users on this forum tend to prefer it. Have you tried downloading the latest Intel drivers, uninstalling the wifi drivers, and installing the ones from Intel? It's worth a try at the very least.

You may also be able to uninstall the ProSet utility and just let Windows manage the wifi - I had some grief in college from the ThinkPad wifi manager that I now suspect was just bloatware.

Have you also tried just disconnecting from the network and reconnecting - that may work and be less of a hassle than unjoining and rejoining the workgroup?

Just some ideas.

 

Freezes less often than before I disabled LPM (link power management). Still occasionaly BSODs (sometimes once a week, sometime less), which I think are unrelated and just Windows.

I think the freezes are/were definitely a power issue - I get them much less or never when on the high performance power plan (where I spend almost all my time). Maybe once per 2-3 weeks now? Maybe less.

I've seen a few weird restarts while on the dock at work, when the lid was closed, I was away for hours (so not using the machine) and the external monitors were in use by the other computer connected to them. Those don't bother me.

I'd recommend it based on the fact it's a beastly tank when it works, and others have had no issues. Mine aren't bothering me enough to try and get Dell out to swap the mobo out. I got a crazy good deal on mine (including a free fourth year of warranty), so I was hesitant to return it - I have a couple years to decide to ask for a new motherboard.

 

I appreciate all ideas. It just gets really frustrating when things don't work the way you know they should. The Intel software seems very complicated...very focused on security...and it seems it tries to do so much. I'm sure it's just some little setting I haven't configured right...or haven't configured at all.

Although I had updated all drivers from the Dell site, I hadn't updated any directly from Intel. I'll see what happens to this over the next few days. It seems to be running fine now, but I've said that before. I do like your suggestion about uninstalling the Proset utility altogether and just letting Windows handle everything. I suspect that's the way I'll go if this acts up again. As an aside, yes, I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting. You would think that would work...it has the security key...but one of the errors it told me was that my location wasn't set to Home; that's when I noticed I wasn't part of the Homegroup but it had somehow changed to Public. My feeling is that it's something to do with the Intel security, but I'm clueless.

If anyone familiar with the Intel software has any thoughts, glad to hear them. But this has really colored what had been a very pleasant Dell experience.

 

Maybe this thread in the networking forum is related (http://forum.notebookreview.com/networking-wireless/716325-intel-7260-a-48.html)? Do you have the 7260 or a different card?

 

Ah, crumb buns, yes, I do indeed have this card. Forty-eight pages of questions, comments, and problems! Surprisingly, though, I feel a little better knowing it's not something I'm doing or not doing causing this. I feel less inclined now to blame the Proset software. If the disconnects recur, I'll gird the loins and check into different drivers. And if worst comes to absolute worst, might look into the possibility of Dell replacing the card. I wonder if that's something we can do ourselves easily? Anyway, Alex, thank you so much for bringing this to my attention.

 

No problem.

I think replacing the card with another that uses the same number and type of antennas is fairly easy, but swapping back to the Dell card might require an additional or different set of antennas, which would mean needing to swap the screen too (because that's where the antenna ends are).


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I have 7260ac and never had any problem with it. Update to latest driver

 

The second option of 128GB (biggest half card there is) is on the way to me. So next week I will ride it to confirm that it has no stack downfalls and performs as expected, then I will report how it works and offcourse if it works.

My reasoning of getting it is that I want to use Half card as cache drive for all cache from both Premere and AE. That will allow me having two configs,


Main Drive 2x 265 in RAID 0 (800 MB/s Throughput)

Half Card cache (480MB/s Dumping and retrieving)

Backup (100-120MB/s 1TB AF HDD)

This gives me a responcive system.

Once I'm out of the woods I may go with 3x 256GB in RAID5 solution. this is slower write but similar to "RAID 0" Read I think.


heres link if anyone want to learn more about RAID and how it works Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) — RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, Matrix RAID, RAID-Ready

 

I had 500 Gb

Yeah thers a mistake somwhere saying Rpm and SSD in one sentance, reason for this is that someone made typo regarding Hybrid drives which are commonly known as SSHD Solid State Hard Drives they indeed do have Rpm... which makes it clear that youd want highest possible which is 7200 . I had 500GB seagate with 5400 rpm, and I can say without hesitation that its slower and less usefull than having HGST 1TB with Advance format spinnin at 7400, and delivering about 100-130mb seq speed. Hybrid drives are a gimmic in my opininion. In practice you are getting bufferd drive... 8GB flash and the rest which is slow HDD??? no use from 8GB and less so from slow HDD. take 256 and get bay caddy with 1TB AF HDD by HGST (fastest laptop drive there is)