Question

Dell Laptop Wi-Fi catcher not working

Asked by: Spareheadone

I have a Dell XPS running Vista Home Premium, and I can not get it to connect to a wireless network. When Vista

first boots I get this message at startup. Your W-Fi Catcher band configuration is not compatible with your WLAN

card band configuration. Select YES to automatically change your Wi-Fi Catcher band configuration or No to keep you

current band configuration.

If I select yes, I get the following message:

Your WiFi Catcher band configuration has been changed to Previous slection 802.11b/g current Selection.

When I go to connect to a wireless network none are showing up.

If I click on Diagnose the problem I get this message:

The Wireless Service is not running on this computer. Start Windows Wireless Service.

I click to start and then get:

Windows cannot resolve the problem.

Any ideas please?

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Answers

 

by: redrumkevPosted on 2008-09-12 at 08:55:40ID: 22461063

Spareheadone,

How are you doing?

Is the switch in the "ON" position for the wireless card (wi-fi catcher)? I had a system that I repaired and spent a ton of time restarting it over and over again, installing the drivers, etc to find out that it was not enabled.

Also - see this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=223192
Regards,
Kevin

 

by: SpareheadonePosted on 2008-09-14 at 09:51:22ID: 22473357

Hi,
Sorry for the delay in replying to this but I've been busy (understatement)

First off, the switch is on of course - I'm not an expert but even I'm not that slow!

I checked out th link you posted and basically tried re-installing th drivers and it had no effect I'm afraid.

Thanks for the help so far.

Any more suggestions please?

 

by: RobinHumanPosted on 2008-09-18 at 06:25:05ID: 22510617

Try deleting the device from the device list and rebooting, and let the system rediscover it; make sure that you have the latest drivers installed as well

 

by: SpareheadonePosted on 2008-09-18 at 07:21:30ID: 22511234

Tried it but unfortunately it made no diffeence.
Update to the problem though is as follows:

I clicked on diagnose and got back a message "Windows Wireless service is not running" is not running on this computer.
So  clicked Start Windows Wireless service and got "Windows cannot resolve this problem"

I checked in services to see if I could manually start the service and I can't even see it listed?

Any other ideas please?

 

by: SpareheadonePosted on 2008-09-18 at 09:39:41ID: 22512762

I have fixed the problem.
Several backgroud dependant services were stopped and were therefore preventing the Wireless service from starting up.
Looks like it could well have been the result of a virus attack.

Thanks for the suggestions anyway.

 

by: ultragonPosted on 2009-12-13 at 17:40:23ID: 26041601

I'm having the exact same problem. I uninstalled Dell QuickSet and reinstalled (I have an inspiron 1420) and it still doesn't work. You said you had several background dependent services stopped and managed to fix the problem. Can you give me a step-by-step account of what you did? Many thanks.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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