Intel ProSet Wireless Issues and Solutions

I decided today that I would update the drivers for my Intel Pro/Wireless 2915ABG Network Card. This is the network card that came with my Dell Inspiron 6000.

Downloading the file from Dell's website was no problem at all. The only thing that bothers me is that the file is 100MB. A bit large for something that just handles wireless connections don't you think?

Anyways, in the past all attempts of upgrading my drivers have led to failure. For one reason or another, the upgrade doesn't work and I revert to old drivers. I always wonder what it is that I am missing ...

Back to the story ... I downloaded the drivers and installed them. I wasn't surprised when I was unable to connect to my network. Another upgrade, and another failure... Wait, not this time. I was determined to see it through.

To save you from my ramblings, this is what I found:

1. My Intel wireless card does not like my wireless router.
2. To get my router and the wireless card talking, I had to downgrade router. Actually, I went from a purely G router, to a mixed mode B/G setting.
3. My wireless card likes to beep when it connects to a network

Okay, so point 2 solved my incompatiblity issue. That's great, except I wish that I didn't have to run in mixed mode. To make sure that my wireless card isn't running in B mode, I made sure that the adapters 'Wireless Mode' was set to '802.11g only'. You can modify this setting from the 'Advanced' tab of the wireless card's properties panel (Control + A from within the Intel ProSet/Wireless application window).



As for point 3 above, the beeping, I think that I managed to fix that by modifying a setting in the Intel PROSet/Wireless Application Settings (issue a Control + P from within the application) window. The setting that I changed was to uncheck the 'Show Information Notifications' box. This seemed to work for me.



All in all, I am glad that I finally was able to upgrade my drivers. Hope that you can too.