Intel ProWireless Turns Off By Itself?

I only use my laptop on two networks, my home network and my university network. This only happens at my university, but I've heard no other complaints from anyone else having this issue so I fear it's only mine.

Drivers are up to date, as I just reloaded the machine a couple weeks ago. This issue was on the previous load, as well as the current.

I will be on my university's network and then packets start dropping, trying to load pages slowly stops working, and then finally pages will repeatedly come up with error connecting. I'll always look to the system tray and the wireless indicator shows the nice little "X" that it has no connection. Looking down at the keyboard, my WiFi light is off. Trying to bring up anything relating to the wireless network hangs (Network Connections freezes up, right clicking the Wireless indicator [managed by Windows] and clicking Status does nothing, right clicking the Dell Wireless icon freezes the menu) and I normally have to Ctrl-Alt-Delete it and end the process. I've tried doing the function key combination to switch the WiFi off and then back on, but alas it stays off and I can't manually turn it back on. Only way I can get it back on is to restart the machine.

Has anyone had the same issues, and if so has anyone found a way to fix this?

 

Personally, I really dislike the Intel utility...it has always given me trouble. Go to your start bar tray, right click on the Intel Wireless icon (look for a yellow or white icon), and "Let Windows Manage WiFi" or some other similar option. You'll probably have to set up your university (and home) network settings again, but Window's management of WiFi is much better IMHO.

BTW, the Windows icon doesn't work because the Intel one is the program that controls WiFi right now. Intel ProWireless was problematic on both my old M140 and my current nc8430.

 

Sorry, I should've been more specific, I'm using the Windows Wireless utility, not Intel's. I've actually had this issue with both, originally when it kept happening I thought it had to do with the Windows Wireless Utility (which I like better than Intel's also) so I switched to Intel's Wireless Manager, it kept happening so I switched back to Windows and alas still the same thing, randomly the device will turn off.

Adding to the background for the issue, I also noticed in the settings for the device that there was a powersaver option to turn the device off to save power -- I thought this may be the culprit and turned it off even though the laptop is always plugged in while I use it, still happens though.

 

Okay, first of all the power saver option turns off the ethernet port on the laptop, not the WiFi...so no worries there.

Secondly, that happened for a while on my M140. Give Dell a call and ask them to replace the WiFi card. If it does with with both utilities it might be a hardware problem.

Finally, you're drivers may be up to date, but are your BIOS?