Oh no, not the Dell/XP "Disappearing Wireless" issue with Windows 7?

Okay, I'm having a little WiFi issue this morning. I just recieved my Clear HotSpot today and when I went to connect it, I noticed that my internal Dell WiFi (Dell 1390 WLAN adaptor) is not showing up in the Windows Connection Manager on the taskbar. Normally, it shows both the WiFi-G adaptor and it's available networks and my external USB WiFi-N adaptor and it's available networks.

Now I'm only seeing the Wireless-N adaptor. If I remove the USB N adaptor, the wireless connection manager shows "No devices present" or whatever. The Wireless G adaptor is showing up in the device manager and in the Network Connections folder, and I can manually add a network and it will connect.

What's up? This reminds me of the disappearing wireless issue I used to have with Dells (and sometimes other brands) and Windows XP. I know there were times that I just had to install additional software to manage the wireless networks, and deal with it, else re-install the OS to fix it.

Does anyone have any ideas on where I can start with this? I've done the obvious: Rolled back/updated/reinstalled drivers, etc..


The screenshot shows my Network Connections folder with both the N and the G adaptor working fine - and the Wireless Manager from the taskbar showing only the N adaptor.

Ideas?

(Sorry about the pic that I dumbed down - that was not for you guys, I made that up trying to explain to one of my hard headed friends what was going on.

Maguscreed said:

The Dell 1390 WLAN actually uses the broadcom wireless driver.
If you are using the one provided by dell, it's not even win 7 compatible. (it's dated sometime in '08)

Dell Wireless 1510/1505/1500/1490/1470/1395/1390 all use Broadcom chipset and therefore the Broadcom driver is correct...

you should be able to get a broadcom driver updated to the first of this year.

I've tried both the Dell and BC drivers. Both drivers acutally worked fine, and let me manually connect to any network on the G card.. Why do you say the Dell drivers aren't compatible? They worked fine for me...? I downloaded them off of the Dell website for Windows 7. That's why it's listing it as a dell driver - in reality it's the broadcom driver, I'm sure.

Like I said, it was working okay and everything was showing up just fine and all of the sudden it's only showing my USB wireless N adaptor in the network manager -- but the G adaptor only shows up in the network connections folder, not the manager on the taskbar..

I wonder if I should nuke all of my network drivers, and start fresh...

Oh, and for the record, Clear 4G hotpsots ROCK. =) I'm loving this thing! 12Mb down and 1Mb up and that's SOLID. I live on the outter ring of the coverage area too. For $45 a month, it just replaced my "borrowed" WiFi connection from down the street. =) Not trying to spam or anything, but I'm cheesin' right now. LOL

You know - now that I need it, I can't get the Broadcom drivers that replace the Dell 1390 WLAN drivers. They were installed for me via Windows Update and since I've rolled them back, they're gone. I can't seem to find them online -- anyone have a link to those by chance? Or shoot them to me in an email.

Well... Heh.. So, I was bitching about the WiFi issue on the phone and my girlfriend walks over and pushes a little slide switch on the side of the machine, the WiFi switch - yeah, that one. =) I couldn't feel like a bigger dumbass! I've never touched that switch, but I wiped the machine down the other day and probably slid it to OFF.

...Remember, there are no stupid questions - just stupid people.

Yep...