Dell 1510 N1 card not connecting to Belkin N1 Router

I posted this in the Dell Forum but I've received little help so maybe someone here can. I should state that the network is working fine as I have a year old Dell 1505 (my wife has it now visiting my son) and it always connected without any problems although it does use a standard wireless card (not N1):

I just received a new Studio 15 (Vista Premium) with the Dell 1510 (N1) Wireless card and I'm unable to connect to my network using a Belkin N1 router. First let me say I'm limited in my knowledge of wireless networking but I did try troubleshooting a little without any success (Wi-Fi is turned on). When I click on "Connect To" it does pickup my network plus several others with great signal strength so the card is seeing networks but when I put my Key in it keeps coming up can't connect to my network.

Since the Studio 15 came with McAfee with it's firewall enabled I disabled it but still no connection. I even tried Safe Mode With Networking but still no success. I finally called Dell and he did some troubleshooting like having me go to Network Adapters and then to the Dell Wireless Card and Advance.

Under "Property" it was set to 802.11h+d and under "Value" it was set to "Loose 11h" but he had me change it to "Band Preference" and "Prefer 802.11g/b". It didn't make a difference but I did notice it had reverted back to the first settings when I go back to that screen.

The tech gave up and transferred me higher up so the new tech says he needs to configure some settings on my Studio 15 and my Belkin Router in order for it to work but it would cost me $69.

I plugged my laptop directly (hardwired) into the internet and downloaded the updated driver 4.170.75.0, A18 for the Dell Wireless 1510 card thinking that might help but it still won't connect. I did notice in the documentation that appeared when I installed the new driver that it was specifically tested to work with my Belkin F5D8231-4 N1 router.

The Advanced Dell tech said if the 1510 card detected my network then there wasn't anything wrong with the card itself but settings that needed to be changed on the laptop and or my router and of course for a price.

I'm not paying Dell another $69 so can someone help me?

Addendum - I called Belkin to see if their router or router setting could be the problem and the tech tried several things but I still couldn't connect. During this troubleshooting he had me set my security to 64 bit (was set to WPA-PSK (No Server) I guess so I didn't have to keep reentering my security Key. He had me try one more thing before he gave up and that was updating the router firmware which happened to be a beta version but guess what, it messed up my router where I couldn't even bring up the router setup page. The router has a lifetime warranty so now they are sending me out a new one.

In the meantime the router still works (although set to 64 bit and I can't change) is there any laptop settings that need to be changed so I can get it to connect to the router because I'm back to square one?

 

Well if you would have done a search on Belkin you would have found it to be the router that has the highest failure rate and problems.

I know of none of the regulars that ever recommend Belkin Hardware for this reason.

As for as security you need to be set to WPA2 AES Personal with the security string random generated using all printable chr with a min of 20chr. You also want a unique SSID and AP broadcasting the SSID. Most all hardware prefers this to be in the clear.

I would un-install third party FW's, disabling does not work 90% of time.

Do the setup using a wired connection only. Using wireless is the way you corrupt the firmware/settings.

 

I've had the router for a couple of years but if you say it's not the best then I'll take your word on it. I know either my modem or router looses my internet connection for maybe 30 seconds at least a couple times a day then reconnects but I don't know which is to blame.

Can you recommend a good N1 router that's easy to setup and will work with my Dell 1510 wireless card?

It's kind of over my head when you say "I would un-install third party FW's" because I know little about setting up a router. That being said my Belkin Router was working with my year old Dell 1505 until the Belkin tech screwed it up.

 

Have your tried resetting the router back to factory and reloading the original firmware?

Third party FW would be on the pc and not the router. The NAT in the router acts like Hardware FW.

Go to smallnetbuilder.com and do some side by side comparison. The belkin always test good, but seams not to be stable. Dlink, Netgear and Linksys both makes good ones. Stayaway from any v1 hardware though, it's not a guarantee they will met the spec. Linksys has started dropping off some of the earlier v1 hardware. Which makes me wonder why, like they ran into a problems with what may be the final 11n spec firmware.

 

The belkin tech said the only way to change back the firmware was from the router Setup page which it will now not display.

If I go back to a router with just 802.11b/g will I still get the range I was getting (and needing) as with the Belkin N1?

Will the Dell N1 card work with a b/g router?

 

If you have a 11g router that uses the MIMO tech YES, you should get the same distance.

All 11n hardware is backward compatable to 11g, 11b was dropped from most most.

Check with the dd-wrt site on loading firmware. Most have a setup procedure that is used to load the router when it comes off the assembly line. It usually requires using the reset and power cable then use a TFTP protocol to upload. This window is only about 2-3 sec long so it's hard to hit at times.

 

In the process of trying to get the Belkin router to connect with the Dell 1510 card I somehow lost my 2Wire Modem settings so I had to call AT&T and they walked me through resetting the modem to factory settings since I wasn't able to by-pass the router and connect to the internet.

The 2Wire 1000SW provided by AT&T is actually a modem/router so I believe this has always been an issue with my using a third part router and loosing connections several times a day although briefly. About a year ago I had a AT&T tech bridge the Modem so it would only work as a modem but either that didn't consistantly work or the Belkin was/is the problem of loosing connections.

Today when the AT&T tech reset the modem to factory settings he didn't bridge the modem this time so it is for now a modem/router. He actually helped me get my laptop connected to my network using the 2Wire as a router but it only is capable of 64 or 128 bit encryption which I assume most people don't think is good enough.

So what do most people do who use AT&T DSL service who are provided with a 2Wire modem/router, use as is or try to add a third party router?