Tech Help?

    Ok, so I'm completely freakin stumped here. I recently wiped my old laptop, a dell inspiron 8100, in an effort to get it running nicely for school and when I give it to my girl later on.

    Well, since I did that I haven't been able to get my wifi card to work, it keeps constantly connecting and disconnecting from my network in like 3 second cycles. I thought it might have been because I hadn't updated the OS yet, so I hooked it up the the hardline and tried to update.

    First I had to activate first though right? Well, I go to do that and, every time, the comp freezes up. I tired to run windows update anyway and it still froze like 2 screens in. I wiped it again. Same thing.

    I  then downloaded the actual update files on my desktop pc and moved them over on a thumb drive. This went through ok, but still, my wifi is screwed up and it freezes when I try to activate it...every freakin time.

    I seriously have no idea what to do with this. It's almost like it has some wacked out virus or some kind of screw up in the bowels of the OS, but I've done a full reformat and new install of XP Home twice now and it's still doing it....Nothing survives a reformat right? I don't know....any help?

Mehs wrote: Drivers?  You may need to install drivers for the wifi card/ethernet port on your laptop, try to find the cd that came with it.  Small things like that can be the problem.

or go to dell's site and pull the latest drivers for that laptop.

and the obligatory: dell sucks.

.Ryan wrote: Well, I've been reinstalling the wifi card from the cd each time. But yeah, I'll check the dell drivers...What kind of drivers would cause such a specific freeze though?

i had a problem with my Dell wifi when I reformatted, found out the driver on the cd they gave me was the wrong one.  did a bit of research via google, found out the right driver, and dl'd that one from dell.  then it worked fine.

Update your router firmware.

is it a pcmcia card you put in the slot or a linksys built in card? if it is a pcmcia card, get teh drivers from linksys not dell.

That is Winblows for you.

so you said the system recognizes the card, right? if so then get the driver from linksys, usually they now come with an exe that installs linksys' wireless network client. i think the thing comes in an exe that you run to extract the stuff to a folder. run it then let it go to wehrever by default. then in device manager go to the wireless card and update the driver. then point it to the folder the linksys download extracted to. if it is a driver problem, this should solve it.

do not let it install the linksys client. after it extracts to teh folder, if the exe keeps going on to install the client, cancel out of it. i hate that piece of crap.


Edited by High Voltage - 08 October 2006 at 1:43am