Dell laptop loses (won't re-establish) wireless connection when resuming from standby

Anyone wanna help me help a friend with this problem? Great! Here's the
problem as described:

<quote>
"On a Dell 8600 Win XP home laptop that has a wireless connection, lately,
when the laptop's been idle for awhile, I can no longer log on to the
Internet. The icons in the systray (the radio graph and the one that has
little )))) marks next to it to show "sending out waves") show that there's
a connection and that it's excellent, but in fact, I can't get online. I've
tried fooling around with the connections, including "repairing," but to no
avail (except once in awhile, something seems to kick in). I ultimately need
to reboot, which would have saved me a lot of time if I had just done that
right off the bat, but I always try in vain to fix the problem first. "
</quote>

My thoughts were that when the laptop goes to a low power/suspend mode, it
was (of course) terminating the connection and not re-establishing on
resume. So as a first stab I advised this:

<quote>You might try releasing and then renewing the IP address on your
wireless
connection to bring it back to life when resuming from an idle state.

To release, open the command line interface (start->run->cmd and then enter)
and type "ipconfig /release" without the quotes and hit enter.

To renew, type "ipconfig /renew" and hit enter.

You can get some help and a list of available commands by typing
"ipconfig/?" in the command line interface.

If it works, you can run the release and renew commands directly in the
"run" line (start->run) without opening the CLI on screen. Just go to start,
run and enter either ipconfig /release or ipconfig /renew as needed.

If it doesn't work, you can try manually disabling and re-enabling the
wireless network connection adapter via control panel. MS has a knowledge
base article on this (KB328747):

1. Start the Network Connections tool in Control Panel. Click Start, click
Control Panel, click Network and Internet Connections, and then click
Network Connections.

2. Right-click Wireless Network Connection, and then click Disable.

3. Right-click Wireless Network Connection, and then click Enable.

</quote>

Needless to say, my advice didn't work. I'm not able to lay my hands on this
laptop myself and I'm not quite sure what to try next. The laptop is using a
Dell/Broadcom OEM wireless PCI card and not the Intel "Centrino" branded
solution. Suggestions?

 

Don't know if this is it or not, but XP's wireless zero configuration
causes a shitload of problems for many people. If it's disabled it stops
its infernal searching for other networks. If there's any config
software for the wireless device use that to manually configure for the
connection instead of allowing WZC.

 

Use an encryption, such as WEP with a password. You can then leave the
router configuration for Broadcast, and be safe. This should allow the
wireless lockup to be much quicker if the signal is lost. In any case, never
have an active wireless network without encryption.

--

Jerry G.
======


Anyone wanna help me help a friend with this problem? Great! Here's the
problem as described:

<quote>
"On a Dell 8600 Win XP home laptop that has a wireless connection, lately,
when the laptop's been idle for awhile, I can no longer log on to the
Internet. The icons in the systray (the radio graph and the one that has
little )))) marks next to it to show "sending out waves") show that there's
a connection and that it's excellent, but in fact, I can't get online. I've
tried fooling around with the connections, including "repairing," but to no
avail (except once in awhile, something seems to kick in). I ultimately need
to reboot, which would have saved me a lot of time if I had just done that
right off the bat, but I always try in vain to fix the problem first. "
</quote>

My thoughts were that when the laptop goes to a low power/suspend mode, it
was (of course) terminating the connection and not re-establishing on
resume. So as a first stab I advised this:

<quote>You might try releasing and then renewing the IP address on your
wireless
connection to bring it back to life when resuming from an idle state.

To release, open the command line interface (start->run->cmd and then enter)
and type "ipconfig /release" without the quotes and hit enter.

To renew, type "ipconfig /renew" and hit enter.

You can get some help and a list of available commands by typing
"ipconfig/?" in the command line interface.

If it works, you can run the release and renew commands directly in the
"run" line (start->run) without opening the CLI on screen. Just go to start,
run and enter either ipconfig /release or ipconfig /renew as needed.

If it doesn't work, you can try manually disabling and re-enabling the
wireless network connection adapter via control panel. MS has a knowledge
base article on this (KB328747):

1. Start the Network Connections tool in Control Panel. Click Start, click
Control Panel, click Network and Internet Connections, and then click
Network Connections.

2. Right-click Wireless Network Connection, and then click Disable.

3. Right-click Wireless Network Connection, and then click Enable.

</quote>

Needless to say, my advice didn't work. I'm not able to lay my hands on this
laptop myself and I'm not quite sure what to try next. The laptop is using a
Dell/Broadcom OEM wireless PCI card and not the Intel "Centrino" branded
solution. Suggestions?

 

Thanks! That put me on the trail and turned up an article at Wired
(http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63705,00.html) with a suggested
workaround:

.. Go to Control Panel.
.. Choose Administrative Tools.
.. Select Services. A two-pane window comes up.
.. In the right-hand pane, scroll down and click Wireless Zero Configuration.
.. Click Stop the Service. A progress bar may come up briefly.
.. Click Start the Service. Again, a progress bar may come up.
.. Close the Services window. At this point, the connection should come back.

 

I second this one...Wireless zero config gets great reviews for being
an improved connection management tool but it's 50/50 for me on my
machines...

 

Oxnard, tell your friend to stick that laptop up your ass side ways. That
way you can be an expert's expert at something. ;-)

Duane

 

One other thing I've ran into is the wireless NIC is sometimes set to
power-down when not in use, especially when the laptop is on battery. Check
for those settings too.

 

I have the same problem on my 8600 using the built in LAN and a broadband
connection. I can get my mail fine but the browser will not load a page
(page not found errors) and /or any downloads I am doing stops cold. Nothing
I try works aka..closing browser, repairing the connection , Rebooting the
modem etc. I have to reboot to fix the problem. Any help much appreciated.