# Dell 1501 Wireless card not working



## HairyNevus

Feel free to move this thread to a better forum if this is incorrect. 

Okay, My Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop with the standard Dell Wireless card running on Vista Basic (32) does not work. When I try to connect to a network, the window that shows where all the nearby Wifi signals are is blank, and the drop-down menu that should be able to select certain kinds of connections won't drop-down at all and is also blank. I have my Wifi light on, I've reinstalled my wireless card and drivers, I've done a lot of what the Dell online tech support walkthrough tells me (but it's hard, because me internet doesn't work) and I've ruled out most common occurances (firewall, drivers, needs reinstall..). 

It'll be hard for me to update this place with more info as my internet doesn't work, but if there's any registry keys or startup services or special things in the BIOS (I checked, and wireless is enabled in the BIOS) that I need to do please try to give me as much info as possible before I try and find a computer again. I understand I'm asking a huge favor from strangers "hey fix my internet for me" but I have no warranty and I'm at my wits end. Any help is greatly appreciated, and I'll try to take some screenshots later on.

No diagnostic or other tests have revealed any problems. My card shows up fine in device manager, but it doesn't seem to show up in the Network center or whatever... It's like there's a glitch where the card has been set to never be used for the internet. Is there a setting somewhere that a malware program could have changed it?

Thanks for any responses.


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## johnwill

Have you tried a wired connection to the computer? That would be a valuable diagnostic, maybe this isn't just a wireless issue.


Let's see this for the machine.

Hold the *Windows* key and press *R*, then type *CMD* to open a command prompt:

In the command prompt window that opens, type type the following command:

_Note that there is a space before the /ALL, but there is *NOT* a space after the / in the following command._

IPCONFIG /ALL

Right click in the command window and choose *Select All*, then hit *Enter*.
Paste the results in a message here.

If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.


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## HairyNevus

My wired connection does work. I was fine w/ the wireless being broken for this fact, but now I moved and my only hope is free coffee shop wifi. I'll try to get that ipconfig info to this forum later today/tomorrow, but I figured out another clue.

Last night while trying to fix my Dell wireless card, I changed the AP compatibility to "broader". When I did that, the device manager refreshed and for a split second I saw another wireless card: Microsoft ISATAP controller #4. The device manager refreshed again and it disappeared. I'm now convinved that the "phantom-ness" of this wireless controller is part of my problems, if not the key to the solution. I'll try to google more info about it, like how to get drivers and such. I *think* there might be a registry key that has this card disabled, so I'll try to find more about that, too.

Thanks for your help.


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## johnwill

I think stuff coming and going in Device Manager sounds more like hardware problems with the wireless NIC.


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## HairyNevus

Okay, I ran the IPconfig thing, but forgot to do the /all. All I saw was that all my wireless cards ring up as "no media detected". Im fairly certain what I need is the driver to the Microsoft ISATAP controller, so that it will appear in the device manager again. However, it seems that driver gets installed with the OS and there's no sucessfull links to a download. I don't know how to pull the driver off the OS install disk. I tried to delete all the regkeys that refferred to the ISATAP controller, but then device manager just listed 5 isatap things that had reg keys in the name (I've restored it since). I also tried to edit just the regkey that said "new device install" from 1 to 0, but that didn't make the device try to reinstall itself when I rebooted. 

How do I initiate a device reinstall for a peice of hardware that isn't showing upin device manager but has registry keys for it?


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## johnwill

If hardware doesn't show up at all in Device Manager, it's not being sensed at the hardware level, and drivers won't help. You need to find out why the hardware isn't seeing the adapter.


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## HairyNevus

Okay, since I found out that this card did exist when I changed a setting in the Dell wireless adapted, causing the Device Manager to refresh and temporarily show the ISATAP controller (then immediately show it missing again), what could I do to help this? there seem to be some regkeys missing from the list under network controllers, the sub boxes that refer to certain controllers are numbered, and 19 and 21 are missing in the list. Should I take a different regkey that refers to the isatap controller (007, 14, there's still a couple) and copy paste them as 19 and 21?

Thank you so much for all your help in this, I've been in the dark for a long time.


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## johnwill

I don't think fooling around in the registry is going to fix this. You might try SFC: SFC Tutorial


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## HairyNevus

OKay, so here's the IPCONFIG /ALL results, at least those that I felt like typing from one comp to another:

Windows IP Configuration:
Host Name...Matt
Primary DNS Suffix...: 
Node type...Hybrid
Ip routing enabled...: No
WINS Proxy enabled...:No

Wireless LAN Adapter Wireless Network connection:

Media state... Media Disconnected
Connection-specific DNS suffix...: 
Description...: Dellwireless 1390 WLAN Mini-card
Physical adress....: 00-19-7E-C8-6E-0D
DHCP enabled...: Yes
Auto configuration enabled...: Yes

...

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 7:

Media State...Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS suffix...: 
Description...: isatap. {AB0417F0-6631-415E-86AA-A38DC2D6E45D}
Physical address...: 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP enabled...: no
Autoconfiguration enabled...: Yes

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 9:

Media State...Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS suffix...: 
Description...: isatap. {7D4EB24C-40E2-4E34-A42C-2B560B20009B}
Physical address...: 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP enabled...: no
Autoconfiguration enabled...: Yes

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 10:

Media State...Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS suffix...: 
Description...: isatap. {7D4EB24C-40E2-4E34-A42C-2B560B20009B}
Physical address...: 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP enabled...: no
Autoconfiguration enabled...: Yes

there's 2 more isatap entries, and a few entries for a 6to4 adapter wich have the same basic info as the isatap. There's also this lastly which may or may not be needed.

Tunnel adapter Local area Connection* 6:

Media State...: Media Disconnected
Connection-specific DNS suffix...: 
Description...: Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical address...: 02-00-54-55-4E-01
DHCP Enabled:...No
Autoconfiguration enabled...: Yes


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## johnwill

I'm mystrified how a wired connection works, there is no wired NIC appearing in the IPCONFIG display!


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## HairyNevus

Sorry, I didn't paste everything since the computer that had the info wasn't connected to the internet and I had to do it manually. The ethernet thing did work. What I have found out since is that my Dell Wireless WLAN card is starting up with the command "-k localnetworkrestricted" or something to that effect. Also, in Vista there's a wireless card diagnostic utility, which when I tried to start up said that the Dell card could not be accessed and the utility doesn't show any info. It had about 5 tests that it could run, all of which fail. Sorry I can't be more specific, I'm on XP right now and am trying to recall stuff I figured out 3 days ago. 

How do I stop the -localnetworkrestricted command (whose existence I found in the "services" page) from happening?


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## johnwill

I guess you didn't read this far? :smile:


> If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.


I never heard of a -localnetworkrestricted command, I'd have to see that in context.


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## HairyNevus

The context is that in my "services" window I look under a service called WLAN AutoConfig and the startup parameters for it are: "C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k LocalSystemNetworkRestricted". I'm just thinking that my WLAN card is what needs to connect, but isn't, therefore should not be restricted?


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## johnwill

I have no idea what that command is doing.


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## andru.beldie

guys, I had similar issues: the card was reported by the Device Manager as working fine, but it did not found my wireless network.

after investigating every possible way, I found out for sure that it simply does not support wireless channel 12 (2.467GHz) and 13 (2.472GHz).

so the solution was simple: I changed the AP settings to use a smaller wireless channel. I put it on channel 11 (2.462GHz), but I guess you can put it on any wireless channel between 1 and 11.


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## 2xg

Thanks for the feedback this is an ancient Thread and it's time to Close.


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