Inspiron E1505, draft n card sees SSID but no connect

Please let me know how to get Dell Customer Service to send you an Intel wireless minicard.

I have reported to Dell Support twice in the last 2 days and no answer. They promised to get back with me within 12 hours.

I guess I can buy another minicard but what gets me is I paid extra for this DraftN 1500 card.

This was just posted in another thread and it might help here I thought I'd reference it in just in case.
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=si_wireless&message.id=28060

Message Edited by DELL-Gina on 11-08-2006 02:31 PM

I sent a PM to the user on that board that apparently got his pre-N dell wireless card on his new XPS system to work with his Belkin Pre-N router, to see if he had any additional ideas on how to get our problem solved.

In the meantime, if anyone makes headway with Dell, thanks in advance for posting.

Thsnk you Gina. That thread mirrors our experience here.


Do you know of the best way to talk to Dell about this and to get prompt action?

Thanks,

I don't think this user actually has a Draft-N card in reading through the post but rather has an Intel. I thought it might help because the post reads that there was a strong signal but no connection and it turned out to be the wireless sniffer on the system. The sniffer has different positions one is off, one is to search and then there's a position that it sits in for use. if it is not in position correctly it could keep you off the wireless, but still see the network. I don't know if your system has one of these but if it does you may want to run through the steps posted.

After one try with the chat room helpline, and then a call to a tech in India (he spoke good english) I was told the Dell 1500 card was incompatable with the Belkin router. So he offered to send me the Dell 1490 card, to which I said no, actually I'd rather you send me the Intel card instead (my logic was that the Intel card is going to have more frequent driver updates). That was no problem, so he was going to send it 2-day and then arranged to call me back in two days to walk me through installing it.

Is it completely satisfactory? Not really. But under the circumstances, I think I got the best result I could have hoped for, assuming that there was no way in the near term that Dell was going to get a new firmware or driver to make it compatable with the N chip in my Belkin router. In the end, i spent about 75 minutes on hte phone and chatroom. I may try the solution in another thread (basically, using another Broadcom driver from Linksys - see http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=si_wireless&message.id=27622) but in the end, I didn't think that was the best solution to have a stable system that doesnt' drop connections.

My Dear Friends:

My problem is yet to be resolved, but I am awaiting the final works of a gentleman named Edward of whom I have high regard and have the highest hopes (I have in my mind as I write this the scene out of the Star Trek movie after the probe went by and knocked out all power on a space station/research facility. They rigged a solar sail and reported that they had the "highest hopes" of it working, but you could just tell that hope was about all they had going for them...).

Anyway, I supposedly do have a 1490 winging it's way to me. Well, crawling. They used DHL/Airborne. I have more confidence in the USPS than them, but one thing's for sure, they're cheap! Oh well. Yesterday came and went and the new puppy wasn't here. Today came and went and still no puppy. I just know that tomorrow it will arrive and work fine. Why? Because I have the highest hopes...

I respectfully choose to withhold the entire story in good will and for the sake that sometimes lightning does strike the same place twice. Or three times. Or maybe about ten times. Heck, I lost count.

I am having this same issue. An Inspiron E1505, out of the box on Monday, connects with no problem to the Airport network at the Office, but at home it refuses to connect to my WRT54GX v1 network. I have both a 2 Year Old Compaq and a PPC Powerbook at home that have no issues joining the network. I have combed over the network settings with Linksys to no avail. The E1505 sees the network, at full strength, but just fails when trying to join it.

So then is this an issue with SRX? Does the Draft N card not have the capability to connect to G networks with MIMO?

My Dell 1500 Draft N connects fine with an old LINKSYS G router. What really shocked me was it would not connect to my Belkin Pre N 8230 and it does not have WPA2 security support which is a requirement of Draft N specifications.

Message Edited by Husky55 on 11-15-200610:30 AM

I have decided to keep my Dell 1500 Draft N card in the hope that it will be upgradable to the N standards whenever that is ratified in 2008.

During the meantime I will buy a Draft N router which is compatible to the Dell 1500.

Of course that has risks that the router will become a paperweight piece of junk in another year if it is not upgradable to N. So take your poison. You can stick a G card into you laptop and keep your router until 2008.

Frankly, it's not a pretty situation. Note that the Draft N products have very poor reviews from PC World and PC Mag and tomshardware.com.

So Gina is not referring to this compatibility issue in regards to getting back to the list with an update? Do I need to purchase a wireless card to use this machine then? :(

@Dasboogs,

I believe that your SRX is using the same Airgo Networks chipset as my Belkin Pre N 8230 router. The Airgo chipsets were highly acclaimed last year with MIMO and still are highly regarded. But, unhappily for you and I, they are NOT compatible with the newer Draft N products.

Gina posted some very informative readings at the top of this forum.

Gina is also referring to the possible update to the drivers for the Dell 1500 to correct some security issues and possibly give the WPA2 support that I referred to.

WPA2 support in NOT in my Dell Wireless Utility for the 1500 Draft N card.