Defective WiFi card?

Locust76

I've been experiencing signal dropouts and lost connections with my laptop's internal PCIe wireless adaptor (Intel Pro 3495ABG) for the last week or so. Just today, the thing started disconnecting entirely from the network. I tried a different router, but that didn't help. I've updated the drivers (Vista Business 32 bit), but that didn't help either. I've checked and re-checked security settings (WPA personal) tons of times.

Could it be possible that the card has somehow gone bad? When I got this laptop earlier this year, it was rock-solid, nothing could break the wireless connection. Now the damn thing doesn't even see my access point in a search.

By the way, I have a chincy 802.11B USB adaptor plugged in right now, and it works flawlessly right off the bat. I just wanna be sure, because I can get a replacement card, but I don't want to drop the money on it if I don't need to.

Uncle Long

Are you sure you've got the right drivers? Try using an older driver or just a different driver.

Locust76

I've unsucessfully installed drivers from Intel AND Toshiba. The one that works the best (i.e. doesn't crash my shit) is the one from Microsoft that came with Vista.

Locust76

Started in safe mode, it saw a few more networks right off the bat but couldn't even connect to an unsecured network in the area. Rescanned and the list dropped to three available networks from more than 8 in this area. All of them are, like, on Ch 6 and 11, mine's on 1. There are no channel conflicts, my wife's computer connects just fine and this one connects just fine with a USB wifi adaptor.

Locust76

Had the USB Wifi installed and connected to my home's network and connected to it again using the built-in wifi. Built-in wifi connected and got an IP address, but lost connection right away with "limited connectivity" and a yellow !

Uncle Long

Are you running any sort of connectivity software that may conflict with the windows connect? I know with my old IBM I had to disable the thinkvantage connection manager or the windows connection manager in order to get the wireless online. That is to say I had to use one or the other; making sure that the other one wad definitely shut off.

Locust76

Uncle Long wrote: »

Are you running any sort of connectivity software that may conflict with the windows connect?

Nope.

On a side note, I put in a PCMCIA adaptor and it's working flawlessly. Anybody ever experience a card just going bad? Seems a bit unlikely to me.