Saturday, November 12, 2011

Dell Inspiron 1300 with WLAN 1370 MiniPCIcard can't see AP now and then

Recently I've noticed that my old laptop (Dell Inspiron 1300 with WLAN 1370 MiniPCI card) behaves weird with WiFi. Sometimes it connects to WiFi just fine but sometimes it doesn't even see the Access Point. After some research i have figured out that laptop can't see WiFi network because AP used channels higher than 11. Another nice thing was that AP chooses channels automatically. So when AP works on channels 1-11 laptop can connect just fine.
There were sveral solutions of problem:
1. Tell AP not to choose channels automatically and stick to some channel that is visible by my laptop.
2. Make laptop see channels higher than 11.

I didn't like that my laptop is sort of limited so i've chosen the second way.
I knew that different countries allow different frequencies for WiFi:
USA: 1-11
Europe: 1-13
Japan: 1-14

The driver i had was for USA but i live in EU so i needed European or Japanese driver to make "patient" to see more WiFi channels.
After some browsing through dell site i found package R151518. It works like a charm.

PS: In few days my Latitude E550 with Intel WiFi Link 5300 refused to connect to the same AP. Again newer driver (INTEL_MULTI-DEVICE_A03_R277775.exe) saved me.