Connectivity issues Dell Studio 15

I am looking for some help with connectivity issues. Just got my Studio 15 two weeks ago. I use unprotected Netgear router that is located on the second floor of my house. It worked perfectly the night I took it out of the box. I connected sitting in the kitchen on the first floor and everything was blazing fast.
I followed all the prompts and updates and happened to install Norton. The next day I couldn't connect from the same place. I asked around and was told that it was probably because of Norton. I uninstalled it but it didn't help much.
It seems that as long as I am in the room where router is located, it all works just fine. As soon as I go to another room it drops the connection. It is odd because it shows "excellent" or "very good" signal strenght at the same time, yet it cannot connect to the network.
Any ideas?

 

start by installing the latest wireless drivers and if that fails I would be checking to see the antenna wires are still antenna leads are properly connected.

I have never seen such poor quality control with a laptop. My niece got a studio 15 laptop for school and the cables for the keyboard, multimedia touch panel, and touch pad were not connected or only partially connected and the fingerprint reader driver was not installed.

 

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/1536/en/SM/minicard.htm#wp1181360

Here's the instruction for the wireless antenna connectors

 

Uninstall Norton. That probably is the source of the problem. It's notorious for causing issues like this. Use a free alternative instead: Avast ( www.avast.com). It's a much better virus program, as it provides the same functionality without dedicating half your computer to itself.

 

Agree with Ductape. Get rid of that Norton crap. AVG is a free virus scan program that updates constantly for free, and Sygate has an excellent personal firewall (also free). No reason to pay these schiesters anymore.

 

Yeah paid antivirus is the biggest joke these days...there are so many free programs out there that have the same features, but are more responsible with your esources. It's very curious that a team of software engineers can think that a program like norton is a good program. I think they believe that if the virus can't use any of the system's resources then it wont work!

Both of the programs that bdiaker mentioned are great as well. Just try them out and see what strikes your fancy.

 

This may not apply but... When I got mine (studio 17) I connected it to a wireless n router and it was dropping the connection constantly. I solved the problem by moving the n router away from the g router. I think the two in close proximity caused the problem. I also run one on channel 10 and the other on channel 1. Since the separation I don't think my connection has dropped once.

Also it will help if you can keep your router away from other electronics.

 

Thanks guys. As I said earlier Norton had been uninstalled two days after, so it's probably not that. But I'll try other suggestions. It drives me crazy because it never happened before with any of my old machines