Laptop Wireless keeps dropping/cutting out - New card or reformat?

[Rob_B]

Hi folks,

I have a HP 6910p on Win7 with what I can only assume is a dodgy wireless card, basically it cuts out on a regular basis, the signal totally drops and it can no longer find any wireless networks until I:

a) Reboot the laptop
b) Disable/enable the card in device manager

Option B doesn't always work either, occasionaly I can get it working again using the Windows wireless diagnostics but all that does is disable/enable the card as well.

It's getting annoying now, it'll do this every 5 mins sometimes then work fine for 2hrs. I've taken the card out and checked the connections as best I can but see no obvious issue. I've uninstalled it and downloaded the 'latest' (about 4yrs old) drivers and short of a reformat I'm out of ideas.

Any suggestions or does anyone have a card I can borrow to test?!

Cheers!

Rob

[HotFrogger]

You could try using a USB wireless adaptor to check the problem is definitely with the card, if the connection drops using the adaptor too the issue might lie somewhere else? Reformatting is obviously the cheaper option if you don't have a USB adaptor or another card to test, just depends how much you have to backup/reinstall as to wether it's worth it I guess!

[virtuo]

You could try disabling bluetooth, I had an HP laptop a few years ago and WiFI/BT didn't play nice with each other, but were fine when the other was turned off.

[Rob_B]

I've been using it with a USB adapter for a few days and it's fine, ordered a cheap internal card off ebay so will see what happens when I install that

[HotFrogger]

I always disable BT in the BIOS now since I never use it and it has caused trouble in the past, completely overlooked that. Might be worth a try if the new card has the same problem.

[watercooled]

Maybe a bit late, but are you using the Windows connection manager or one supplied by the card MFR? TBH on a few occasions I've found the MFR utilities to be flaky, and uninstalling it and using the Windows one sometimes fixes things.

[Rob_B]

Forgot I'd posted this!

Got a new card from ebay and apart from a bit of teething trouble (low signal) it now works fine so it was the card