Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of sambob3
sambob3

asked on

Dell studio 1537 wifi disabled. Intel 5300. Wireless not working

I have the Dell Studio 1537 running Vista home premium and the wireless isnt working at all. the laptop has the intel 5300. on start up i get the message

"Your wifi 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 your current band configuration. with the option YES or NO, either do nothing.

Also the wifi light above the keyboard if off. And in device manager it finds the Intel 5300 but it is disbaled and when i reenable it doenst enable sometimes frezzing the process. i have done a system rollback and even the point of a re installing the OS. Please help as Dell are no help
Avatar of Peter Hart
Peter Hart
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

when rebooting the machine press <ctrl>-F12 while the Dell screen is on display.  this will load up a menu with (hopefully) an option to go into "system utilities"
run the system utilities to check the hardware.

when you re-installed the OS - did you use the Dell re-install method or is it just a generic OS install ?
when you look in the device manager are there any yellow triangles inthe list of devices?
Avatar of sambob3
sambob3

ASKER

system utilities didnt appear.
I reinstalled with just the option on my computer and the disc.
yes there are yellow triangles unde rother devices
Ethernet Controller
SM bus Controller
and unknown device

however i still had the problem before the reinstall,
Avatar of sambob3

ASKER

any help?
the yellow triangles are why its not working...

find the Dell driver disc and reinstall all the drivers, the unknown device is probably the wireless driver missing.
if you haven't got the disc try the dell website here:
http://support.dell.com/support/index.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn&~ck=mn
See if this article helps - https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/Hardware/Desktops/PCs/Dell-desktop-Correct-Driver-Load-Order-after-re-installing-Windows.html

I wrote one for notebooks too, but it got messed up when being moved from beta.

But step 1 (NSS or DSS) isn't needed for vista, so just skip that step and see if you can get the rest to load correctly.

You might still need to boot into Safe Mode to get the chipset driver to load correctly... hard to say.
Avatar of sambob3

ASKER

hey i did all that now and there are no longer anymore yellow triangles. it is still not working. could it be the Intel card inside the computer not working, but would it still appear on the list of devices if it wasn't working. im thinking of getting it replaced but not sure if thats will be a waste. any other suggestions?
Avatar of sambob3

ASKER

also when i use a wireless usb adapter that works fine.
is there a switch to disable the wireless? (usually tiny hidden or a <fn> <f?> key to enable it
maybe in the BIOS the wireless is disabled?
Usually the hot-key combination is Fn+F2 on Dell notebooks. And the Quickset (or Dell Control Point, whichever your notebook has) can be programmed to toggle only the WiFi, only the bluetooth, or both of them using that hot-key combination... so if using Fn+F2 doesn't toggle the light open Quickset (or DCP) and check its settings.

The 'hard' switch for the wireless card is a slider on the left-side near the rear, above the HDMI port - it should have an antenna tower icon on it, and if the red line under it is showing it's turned off.
Avatar of sambob3

ASKER

nah guys ive tried that. on and off no different. just turns my bluetooth off
ok re-reading your question (always helpful)
""Your wifi 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 your current band configuration. with the option YES or NO, either do nothing."

I think you should be selecting YES - its sounds you have the wrong software for the wireless hardware. (newer laptops are supporting both the 2.4 ghz or 5GHz)
I suspect you have your set incorrectly
more info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISM_band

use the dell wireless assistant
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Darr247
Darr247
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial