Help me fix my wife's laptop wireless connection

[madmonkeymusic]

My wife has an aging latitude d820. It was having a few problems so I added memory, did a clean install of windows xp. The only thing that remains a problem is it keeps dropping the connection from our router. the other computers are fine so I am pretty sure it is not the router. According to the specs the only thing that looks like the wirelss card is listed as: Card, Network, Minicard, 3945ULD Dell Americas Organization. Two questions
1) is there a way to test it to make sure I need to replace it
2) Do I have to replace the minicard or can I just cheat and get her a USB or express card wireless adapter. I assume I will have to uninstall the card first if that is the case?
thanks all
adam

 

[Saga Lout]

USB dongles are so inexpensive now that it's hardly worth thinking about opening the hatch to replace the wireless chip. You could get another one from Dell or e-Bay but simply leave it there, disable it in Device Manager and use an external.

 

[jsmakkar]

Just a thought:

Try updating the BIOS of this laptop. This might work. I had a similar issue once and updating BIOS fixed that.

 

[madmonkeymusic]

Best answer selected by madmonkeymusic.

 

[madmonkeymusic]

Good Idea jsmakkar but I did that already and no luck. It was 8 rev's out of date though! LOL

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

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