Internal wifi card gone bad?

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Has anyone had this happen to a laptop, or a desktop for that matter? Over the past month my Gateway laptop will have a full connection to my wireless router, but sometimes the connection to the internet drops off, and when I click to trouble shoot, it says the default gateway is not available, or that the connection to the internet through the router or cable modem is broken, it resets the internal cars, and it reconnects, only to drop off again in 5 minutes. I've tried various things to fix the problem like making sure the computer isn't set to turn the card off, updating the driver, and making sure it has full power in the settings. I though it was fixed; didn't have the problem for about a week and all of a sudden it's doing it again; internet connection turns on and off after a minute or 2 and I have to reset the wireless card to reconnect. Mind you, the entire time it has a full connection to the router itself, just not the internet. My Dad's and brothers laptops and all our phones aren't having any problems so it's not the modem or router; I think the internal card has gone haywire. I got a USB wireless adapter this morning; hoping it fixes the issue. I've never had an internal wifi card go dead before.
 
Yup, had that experience on a Dell that I was decommissioning last night actually. I just ended up hard-wiring it since I was migrating the data off it and then taking it out of service.

What chipset is on the card? I find the Intel ones seem to last the longest.
 
In my experience, Intel cards are the most reliable, Atheros are the "best" all around and Broadcom are the absolute worst.

Have you checked that the antenna wires that run into the screen are not broken?
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Yup, had that experience on a Dell that I was decommissioning last night actually. I just ended up hard-wiring it since I was migrating the data off it and then taking it out of service.

What chipset is on the card? I find the Intel ones seem to last the longest.


In the device manager, it's listed as Intel Wifi Link 5100 AGN.

I had a weird problem about 8 months ago where the laptop would freeze going into sleep mode automatically and I traced it to an outdated driver for the Wifi card based on the error code it kept producing. Maybe the card just went haywire.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: Miller88


Have you checked that the antenna wires that run into the screen are not broken?


Didn't check that. I'd replace the internal card if this laptop was easy to disassemble, but it's the kind where you have to take everything apart to get inside and I'm afraid in the process I'll break something else. Had that happen before.
 
Yup, wifi cards do occasionally go bad, whether internal or external. I had an MSI netbook once where the internal wifi card started acting up after a few years, wouldn't hold a connection. Ended up getting an external USB one, and all was well again.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
So you currently have the most recent drivers from intel.com on there?


Yes.

Knock on wood, the external USB adapter is working fine.
 
Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
So you currently have the most recent drivers from intel.com on there?


Yes.

Knock on wood, the external USB adapter is working fine.



Sounds like the internal may be catching the dead then. USB is a decent alternative if the internal one, as you've noted, isn't easy to swap-out.
 
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