Solution for WiFi Problems

I was having an internet problem where the connection bars for my network (lower right side of screen) showed a yellow exclaimation point and said internet connection not working (or failed or ?) though I IDI have a network connection (my home wifi network).... BUT, if I took it to another network like startbucks it would work. so I took it home and it still showed no internet connection....I did a ton of trouble shooting and stuff but finally found a simple 3 step solution:
1) Go into control panel and remove any weird troubleshoot or fix programs (like driver fix programs)
2) do a search (bottom left screen icon) for "firewall" then when the firewall program opens REMOVE BOTH PRIVATE AND PUBLIC FIREWALLS!)
3) WAIT A FEW MINUTES, then search for firewall AGAIN, this time starting/open the firewalls back up.
then do a reboot, and surprise! both the internet will now work, and the laptop also runs a lot faster. (somehow this resets the wifi card and connections)

Prior to this I tried a ton of trouble shoot programs, even defragged the hard drive and took it to a pc repair place who were also stumped....then I stumbled on the above solution and now my alianware m18x again has internet!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you have the same problem, try this simple solution and let others know!

 

exellent i was having this issue and is annoying as hell, will try this at home and report back!!

 

How'd it go?

 

I have an M18x R2 with a Killer Wireless N-1103. Sometimes I have trouble connecting to WIFI when I am at a hotel or away from home. My son has an m17x with a Broadcom ac wireless card BCM4352. We can be in the same hotel room and he connects easily with good speeds and mine will not connect for several trys and with lower speeds. I have an ac router at home and my speedtest is about 5MB down and his is 50 MB down when our laptops are 3 feet apart. Any ideas why I have such poor wireless performance? Driver issue or do I need to update my card?

 

Did you go to Killer website and get the latest drivers from them? Otherwise it sounds like a flaky card or bad antenna connection? I called Dell once with a similar issue and the girl had me touch the antenna connections with my finger which caused the problem to go away and she said Ya there ya go. So I guess I was supposed to touch my finger on the connector every time I had a wifi issue.

 

Your son is lucky. The BCM4352 wireless AC card I have is a worthless piece of trash. It's now in a plastic baggie in my desk drawer because it works as well there as it does installed in the laptop. Oddly enough, the Killer 1103 is also one of those WiFi cards that either works well or not at all. It is in good company with the one in your son's machine. You both have the two worst WiFi cards Alienware ever offered.

If updated drivers don't fix it, the best approach would be to replace it with an Intel Ultimate-N 6300. You can find them on eBay dirt cheap and it's one of the best WiFi cards ever made. If you want a good WiFi card with built-in Bluetooth, Killer 1202 is the best you can get in a form factor that works for the M18xR1 or M18xR2.

 

At the time it didnt fixed the problem but my wifi is working fine now... Strange