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    Dell 1601 Troubleshooting help (WiGig works, Wifi doesn't)

    Discussion in 'Networking and Wireless' started by alexhawker, Dec 23, 2016.

  1. alexhawker

    alexhawker Spent Gladiator

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    The Dell 1601 card in my M4800 has been rock solid for years, until this past Monday.

    I noticed that I was unable to see or connect to any wifi networks, but didn't have time to mess with it, so I just used Ethernet.

    The problems continued when I got home, though I found that the D5000 wireless docks I have continue to work fine, so I know the WiGig portion of the card is functioning perfectly, however I'm unable to see any wifi networks, whether 5GHz or 2.4, (Netgear R7000 at home and Meraki MR32s at the office).

    I was originally thinking maybe the antenna got disconnected from the card somehow, but the WiGig working makes me think this may not be the case since I think it shares one or more antennas with the regular wifi connection.

    I've tried reinstalling the latest driver with no results.

    Does anyone have any other ideas of what to check before I open my machine up to look at the antennas, or assume the wifi portion of the card has failed?

    Thanks in advance!
     
    alexhawker, Dec 23, 2016
    #1
  2. alexhawker

    alexhawker Spent Gladiator

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    FWIW it was a hardware failure.

    I got Dell to send a replacement and was able to get it working again in under 5 minutes (they sent a display assembly too in case the antenna wire broke somewhere, but that wasn't needed).
     
    alexhawker, Dec 27, 2016
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  3. yogish

    yogish Newbie

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    was it not a wifi driver issue?
     
    yogish, Jan 12, 2017
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  4. alexhawker

    alexhawker Spent Gladiator

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    No, replacing the card was all I needed to do to get wireless functionality back.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
    alexhawker, Jan 12, 2017
    #4