Computers & Networking

[sjr45]

I think the WLAN card on my Inpsiron 6400 is dying. To the best of my knowledge it is an internal PCI-e Mini Card WLAN. Can that part be replaced individually, or does it require replacing the whole board?

[CrystalWoW Community Veteran]

If your wireless card is going bad just get a usb external adapter.

[Entropy]

That's the easy solution but it is not convenient.

Why do you think it's dying?  Are you sure it's not a new interference source nearby?

It is possible to buy replacement mini-PCI-e wireless cards, but these are specialty items and sometimes have oddball compatibility quirks.  They are not sold by BBY as they are almost always sold as replacement parts by manufacturers.

[MichaelHWG]

You can find a replacement card cheap and should be fairly easy to replace. as entropy said they aren;t sold at best buy

Here is how to replace
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins6400/en/sm/btooth.htm#wp1000550

but I am also curious on why do you think its dying? Losing connection a lot

[sjr45]

It's an older laptop, and I had to wipe it recently. Before I wiped it I was getting errors that the WLAN card was not functioning properly, and it wasn't. It would lock up every couple of seconds on Pandora, and you could forget about loading G-Mail. It was better for a little while after I wiped it but it's still tripping out. I had an install problem with the OS so i'm going to have to wipe it and start over again, and i'm just trying to get everything addressed at once. I'm considering the external USB option, but still uncertain if it will truly bypass the onboard card. If not, then the faulty card could still pose a problem?

Thanks for your reply!

[MichaelHWG]

You can disable the bad wireless adapter in network connections or device manager, or simply remove it using guide above.

Just curious, since you said it worked briefly after you reinstalled everything. By any chance did it go bad after a driver update? I have seen wireless cards gob ad after driver updates and just downgrading thed river fixes the issue.

[Entropy]

One of my personal favorites for isolating driver vs. hardware problems is an Ubuntu LiveCD - this allows you to run a completely different OS right from the CD with no need to install to your hard drive.