Stopped Seeing WiFi After Working Fine for a Week!

[NJCurmudgeon]

I recently purchased an XPS 8700 (Windows 10). It recognized my wifi router immediately during set-up and was able to access the internet. In the last day or so, I noticed that it started having intermittent loss of connection.

It was working this morning, but stopped and I have been unable to get it to work for the last hour or so. I rebooted both the router and the computer. I am typing this on a laptop which is able to access the wifi, so I know there is service and the router is working.

Nothing was changed on the XPS 8700 (that I am aware of, assuming no background updates). The tower has sat on my desk and not been bumped or anything that might disconnect something internally. Yet it cannot find any wifi networks at all. When it was working, it saw my router as well as a couple others in the building.

I also tried reloading the driver from the Dell website. I am aware of the unsupported VPS issue, but the command prompt solution did not work, this is not an upgrade since it came with 10, and it was working for a week. So I don’t think that this is the issue.

 

[Trouble]

Not sure what might be going on exactly, but I have read some reports that some people have had some success in resolving WiFi issues by changing the WPA2 Encryption setting from TKIP to AES or AES to TKIP.
Might be worth looking into.
On your Wireless router, most of them have an advanced wireless security configuration page that will allow you to experiment with various encryption settings.

 

[NJCurmudgeon]

My router is from Optimum and the only security options I seem to have are WPA + WPA2 and WEP. I don't see anything about advanced settings. It's showing my two computers on the network, but only this laptop as connected. It seems it is the computer.

 

[sohaeb mohamed]

m not sure if i were the same but i faced a very similar issue! try and right click on my computer and choose mange then device manger and see if all the network drivers are enabled and up to date

 

[NJCurmudgeon]

I reinstalled the drivers. According to the Dell website, they were the most-recent (from 2014).

When I go to the Network Connections page, the Wi-Fi shows as disabled. I right-click "Enable," it says it is enabled, but remains greyed out as disabled! "Diagnose" doesn't detect any problems. The drivers for everything show as up to date. I wonder if there isn't something wrong with the Dell Wireless-N 1704 802?

 

[Trouble]

Is it on?
Many laptops have a switch to enable the wireless radio.
It could be a physical button, or a slider or a combination of the Fn Key and one of the top row keys.

 

[NJCurmudgeon]

It will be working (the internet will be working) and then the connection disappears without any obvious cause. So it is (sometimes) on. But it looses it for a while. It was running this morning, then it stopped. I reinstalled drivers and it worked for a couple of hours. It stopped again about two hours ago and has not worked since. I am thinking I should open the thing up and check the physical WLAN card. The issue almost has the characteristics of a short. Maybe there is a loose connection or something? Or perhaps the card itself is faulty? If it never worked at all, I could see it being a Windows 10 issue or drivers. The way it works and stops makes me think it is a physical thing - maybe after it's been on a while and warms up, something expands? Fortunately, it is pretty easy to open the case and access the card.

 

[NJCurmudgeon]

There does not seem to be anything obviously unplugged. The WLAN is seated and held in place with screws. There are two wires that I can't tell if they have a short or not. Wiggling them did not have any effect.

 

[NJCurmudgeon]

There does not appear to be any other switches on the tower or the keyboard. The fact it stops working the way it does leads me to believe that's not the issue.

 

[NJCurmudgeon]

So when I keep reinstalling the driver, I get limited connectivity...can anyone help me to determine if it is a faulty wifi card?

 

[NJCurmudgeon]

So I was thinking about the two wires that went from the wifi card up into the roof of the tower...I wondered if they perhaps attached to a wifi signal receiver. I had put an external hard drive on top of the tower (there is an indentation next to the USB ports that is supposed to be for devices) and had placed a small box on the back while in the process of moving stuff around in my office to accommodate the new equipment. The idea crossed my mind - what if these things was somehow interfering with my computer from seeing the wifi signal? I removed both and the wifi appears to be working. I say "appears" because it had worked in the past for a while before losing signal. So I am reluctant to claim victory!

Can anyone say if this might have been the problem? Or was it just coincidence? I suppose I could put the stuff back on top and see if it looses wifi again, but I was wondering if this was a plausible cause?

 

[Trouble]

Generally those two wires make up the antenna for the wireless radio.
I suppose that any type of interference generated by a spinning drive or any other EMF stuff could disrupt the signal.
Heck at my house, opening a closing a door from one room to another can impact the signal.

 

[NJCurmudgeon]

I am waiting for my Carbonite to finish doing its backup (it's taking a long time because this is the first backup of the new computer) and I don't want to mess with it. But I will try putting stuff back on top and see which may have been the culprit. The external drive could have created EMF interference, though it would seem odd since there is an indentation and two USBs (including one that charges) intended for things like smartphones. The other object was a pen caddy that was sitting on the back end. There is a small spot above the service tag that is smoother and I was wondering if that was some sort of receiver under there.

In any event, the internet has been functioning normally for several days now, so unless this was a remarkable coincidence, I think it may be the cause! I am leaving the thread open until I get a chance to try putting stuff back on top and seeing if it causes the issue again. If I can confirm it, I will mark this as "solved"!

Thanks!

 

[Trouble]

though it would seem odd since there is an indentation and two USBs (including one that charges) intended for things like smartphones

That sounds like an external docking station similar to what I have on my case, so I would not expect that to be an issue, although again.... it's possible, as I do not have a wireless card in mine and I do not know the route your antenna wires take. I would have expected the vendor to have taken that into consideration, as a potential problem if that is, in fact, the problem.