Question Dell Inspiron XPS 13 9310 - Wifi not working after disassembly

[osacomp]

I recently took apart a coworkers Dell Inspiron XPS 13 9310 to apply some new thermal paste due to the fans being very loud when using it.

I wore an anti-static strap, used all the right tools to open it up, using a plastic pic with a guard to ensure i did not insert it too far when opening up the housing. I disconnected the battery during the repair. The repair fixed the fan noise, but after successfully booting back up windows will not allow me to turn the wifi on and it is not detecting the network.

Under device manager it shows the network adapter as detectable and working properly. The driver and network card is made by Killer.

I opened it back up making sure I had not damaged the antenna, network card, or anything else in that area and I had not. Other troubleshooting steps I have done:

• Restarted the PC
• Ran windows diagnostic on the wifi (said the wifi is not turned on, but when I hit the switch to turn it on it just immediately turns it back off).
• Reset the network settings.
• Tried restarting windows with only the necessary processes.
• Tried both updating and using on drivers for the card.

For some reason the option to restore to a previous restore point of windows it not available. Complete factory reset is a last resort. What am I missing here? It seems like a software or setting issue, but happened right after taking it apart and disconnecting the battery.

 

[Lutfij]

You might want to see if the laptop is pending any BIOS updates. If not, then try and reseat the WiFi adapter. if that doesn't help, try disabling and enabling the device in Device Manager. If that doesn't help, try and uninstall the device from Device Manager, then manually reinstall with the latest driver sourced from Dell's support site bespoke for the laptop using the service tag.

I would advise against a reset and instead look into reinstalling the OS after recreating your bootable USB installer for the OS but install all drivers with the latest version in an elevated command.

 

[osacomp]

You might want to see if the laptop is pending any BIOS updates. If not, then try and reseat the WiFi adapter. if that doesn't help, try disabling and enabling the device in Device Manager. If that doesn't help, try and uninstall the device from Device Manager, then manually reinstall with the latest driver sourced from Dell's support site bespoke for the laptop using the service tag.

I would advise against a reset and instead look into reinstalling the OS after recreating your bootable USB installer for the OS but install all drivers with the latest version in an elevated command.

Alrighty, Ill be working on it again in a day or two and will give that all a try.

 

[osacomp]

Bit of an update for new things I have tried:

1. Tried enabling and disabling in device mangager
2. Tried uninstalling and restarting, it did detect the device and it was visible after restart but still not allowing me to switch on wifi.
3. I deleted and redownloaded the driver from dells website for that specific make/model.
4. Updated to latest version of Windows 11 and most current bios update provided by Dell.
5. Turned the WLAN controller from manual to automatically on.
6. Restarted the PC with all non-essential services turned off to make sure nothing software related was bugging it.

However, under wifi I still am unable to turn on the wifi. Im at my wits end here... what am I missing?

 

[azteched]

Bit of an update for new things I have tried:

1. Tried enabling and disabling in device mangager
2. Tried uninstalling and restarting, it did detect the device and it was visible after restart but still not allowing me to switch on wifi.
3. I deleted and redownloaded the driver from dells website for that specific make/model.
4. Updated to latest version of Windows 11 and most current bios update provided by Dell.
5. Turned the WLAN controller from manual to automatically on.
6. Restarted the PC with all non-essential services turned off to make sure nothing software related was bugging it.

However, under wifi I still am unable to turn on the wifi. Im at my wits end here... what am I missing?

Do you have Killer ax500 as your wifi adapter? If yes, I have bad news for you... It seems to be common problem for 9310s with killer cards based on Qualcomm chips. You may see Dell support forums. The only way is to try to reset bios settings to bios defaults, but it rarely helps. Dell usually replaces mainboards in this case. By the way, in my case the wifi is active in ubuntu and in live bios update feature in dell bios.