DW1520 Wireless N WLAN half mini card issue driving me crazy - PLEASE HELP!

I have a Dell Studio laptop with a DW1520 Wireless N WLAN half mini card that is intermittently switching off wireless on start-up under Windows 7. If a connection is made at start-up it works fine however every one in three start-ups fails to initiate wireless (I see a red cross over the wireless bars in the system tray). To date I have tried the following however none of these solve the problem.

1. FN + F2. Nothing happens
2. Unchecked "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" under power management
3. Restarting the WLansvc service

At present my only solution is to repeat restarting the laptop until I regain a wireless network connection. I am also hearing a faint distorted playback of the start-up windows tune on start-up when wireless start-up fails and was wondering whether this is indicative of a hardware fault with my wireless card however this may be a red herring!

Is there any easy way to determine whether this is a hardware fault or software configuration with my network card? The problem is intermittent and does not happen on every startup which is confusing. Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated as this problem is driving me CRAZY! Thanks - Jabba

 

Hi, After a bit more investigation I have found that I can launch the Dell Windows Mobility Centre by pressing [Windows Key + x]. This application has an option to switch the wireless hardware radio on and off rather than simply enabling\disabling wireless using [FN + F2] which does not work if the radio is off.

Whilst this is a workaround rather than a fix I thought I would mention it. I will probably call Dell Support tommorrow however would welcome any other ideas out there as this is still very annoying...

- Jabba

 

Update on progress. I called Dell technical support who updated my BIOS to v10 and advised me to monitor the situation for the rest of the day. After three restarts the wireless radio was disabled on the third. As a consequence I have also installed the latest Dell Wireless WLAN 1520 Half MiniCard Driver (Version: 5.30.21.0, A01, Release Date: 10/7/2009) from the Dell Support Site and will monitor for occurrences of the same wireless radio problem for the rest of the day. Assuming this does not fix the problem does anyone have any further suggestions on the next course of action? Any help would be greatfully appreciated. Regards, Jabba

 

Hi could you try to activate the lan trough the bios settings. I forgot what was the key to get into the bios setings. I guess F2.

 

Hi clogui,

Thanks for your help. Here is a note of the wireless settings under my BIOS.

Windows (Switch)/(Hotkey) - All
Internal Bluetooth - Enabled
Internal WLAN - Enabled
Internal WWAN - Enabled

I am assuming that these are normal and correct? Any help you could offer would be appreciated? Any other ideas I could try?

Thanks in advance,

Jabba