Dell Latitude D600 TrueMobile 1300 WLAN Mini-PC Wireless Not Working

[Barry Barrington]

First off I want to let it be known that I am not very good with computers.

I recently bought a Dell Latitude D600 Laptop from a garage sale, so far everything seems to work fine except the internet connection. No matter what I try It won't connect to my wifi or any wifi connection for that matter. I've looked around the forums and other websites, but none of the prolems seem to fit mine. As far as I know the connection has never worked and the person I bought it from has moved to a location that I don't know. When I look at it on the Network Connections Window( I'm using Windows XP by the way) it says Wireless Network Connection, and below that Not Connected, Firewalled, and then below that it says Dell Truemobile 1300 WLAN Mini-PC. I've looked at the firewall, but I don't know what to di with it.

 

[Laptop_Nerd]

Hi,

Have you tried connecting the laptop using hard wired connection? See if that would let the laptop connect to the internet just to see if has something to do with just the wireless card or some security settings. Next thing to do is to boot the laptop into Safe Mode with Networking just to see if it is with your firewall.

How to boot to Safe Mode with Networking.
- While the laptop is booting up repeatedly tap on F8 until you see Advance Boot Options
- Select Safe Mode with Networking then press Enter
- Once in the desktop try connecting to your wireless network again.
- If it still won't connect just reboot the laptop so it would go back to the normal mode.
- Next step to do is to uninstall/reinstall the wireless card
- If you have another PC available you can download the wireless card driver from Dell Support site.
- Here's the link: http://downloads.dell.com/network/R143355.EXE (just click on it and it should download)
- Uninstall the wireless card driver from Device Manager then install the file you downloaded from the other PC.
- Reboot the laptop for all the changes to take effect first.

 

[psoohoo]

This is a pretty old card. You may need to check your router/access point configurations.
From what i have see online, it is a 802.11b/g card.
The drivers and OS may not support certain encryption settings.
There was also an patch to Windows XP to add WPA2, i dont recall the KB at this moment.
Don't know if you can get online but make sure you have all the "latest" updates to Windows XP.

If all else fails you may want to get another card.
The D600 has a mini-PCI connector for the wireless card. You can probably find dirt cheap cards for it.
You may want to look at the Intel 2915abg.