Very strange DV7 wireless problem

[Crony]

I bought a DV7-1125EA few days ago. At the beginning I thought disconnecting issue might be a router, ISP etc problem. But then I found the wireless drops signal after a 10 mins or so strangely. Sometimes by reconnecting, sometimes by restarting the DHCP service it started working again. I also installed XP on it, but I had the same issue on XP too.

I asked HP guys, they told me to reinstall drivers and so, didnt worked out. Finally they asked me to do recovery to manufacturer setting. Well, it now works -for a day or so- for Vista. But XP is still the same, so i am not trusting the recovery. When it disconnects, it doesnt show disconnect icon, but http and local network doesn't work but I still can ping and use ftp. interestingly when i am downloading something and this problem happens download continues, but new pages wont open!!! I didnt installed anything special on XP but drivers and SP3.

Does anyone has an idea what is it? hardware or software problem?!
anyone else with similar problem?!

[JayJay]

do you have a cordless phone in your house hold? is it 2.4 or 5.8 ? Also you might want to check the channel of what ever is broadcasting your wireless connection? might change it to channel 10 or something

[Crony]

I do have a cordless phone, but dont know its channel number or something. But I do know the other computer works perfectly fine with this router. Beside the Vista still hasnt any problem after recovery. But I have heard other guys had wireless problem with DV7, and they said sending for a HP stuff only worked for them for a while. I am more suspecious about drivers. May be last Intel driver has a confict or something with one of my other devices... which caused the recovery works but new driver from intel doesn't! But still I am not convinced it is not a hardware problem, which I would like to be sure ASAP in order to start moving my files on it and use this laptop, or no put it back for exchange or repair...

Thanks for the reply anyway!

[JayJay]

the channel i was reffering to was the broadcast of your wireless device. You might have to change the channel higher. Or are you using a wep or any other secured wireless network system?

[Crony]

My Wireless driver highest channel is 11, which was by default. I changed it to 9 and 10. But it was the same.

I put it in more test, i wrote a small .net application to fetch www.google.com every 10 seconds. Because of lack of proper free wireless monitor on the net. Interestingly it never faild, even when the IE and Mozilla couldnt open pages. As I said before FTP and ping still works when that strange behaviour happens. But Yahoo messenger, Local network, IE and Mozilla, no. So it means there is no problem about signal. But surprisingly when it happens, when I am trying to disconnect and connect to router, it will fail to reconnect which Intel wireless pro says 'Failed to get a  valid IP address' and restarting DHCP will do the job.

Now after playing with channels i have new problem: it happens aftrer each bootup and I have to turn off/on wireless to make it work and connect to the hub.

[JayJay]

simply just click the option in your router/modem to restore defualt settings. Also has norton been removed? as in have you ran the norton removal tool?

[nazcar4u]

I agree with JayJay,

What Anti-Virus are you running? After you installed it did you run the Norton Removal Tool at http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039?OpenDocument

[rexy]

Hi Crony,

I recently purchased a HP dv7-1202tx and have a wireless connection problem that is scarily similar to yours!

Have you had any luck with it?

Mine started out with having to disconnect / reconnect to the network and now I have to disable and then enable the adaptor to get it to connect (or do both!!)

I have looked for and installed hp updates for vista SP1 and Intel5100agn network adaptor but there has been no improvement.

Hoping you will have some good news......?

With thanks,

Rexy.

[samschilling]

another thing to check on, if you are still able to ping out when you can't open webpages, is your DNS settings.

[koolaid2233]

I not sure about you but i bought a HP pavillion laptop last year and after a month the wireless network started dropping periodically. I could turn the wireless off using the switch at the front and it will work (for a while) after i turned it on again. Same goes for disabling the device in device manager or uninstalling the drivers. Buys you another 10 ~ 15 mins before it dies again.

It seems that it was because of the high temperatures generated by the GPU which was a nVidia 7600go. 70~90 degrees C. hot enough to cook an egg and certainly will cause much discomfort if not burns should you use the keyboard to type. It was a hardware fault. Bad design, defective part nothing software, nothing drivers or bios settings will fix. Is your unit running too HOT?

The next symptom will be artifacts when the GPU is put under stress and not long after that, total failure. HP will tell you to update your BIOS to allow the fan run on high to cool the unit down but it still runs too hot. All it does is extend the life of the unit so that total failure occurs after one year which is the standard for HP laptops. If your unit is damages it will still remain damaged. The wireless will still drop, artifatcts will still occur but total failure will be averted till after the 1 year warranty lapse

This post will probably be deleted by the admins should you wonder why after reading my post you cannot find it again.