Hello,

I will start by saying I am an idiot when it comes to computer technical jargon so bear with me. I have a Dell laptop that has been working fine for a few years great WiFi connections from both my home and my neighbor's wireless connections. So last night I was trying to clean the laptop and opened it up. Good news is it works and I didn't have any extra screws! Bad news is now I have almost no wireless signal strength. I can only see my network (normally I can see at least 3) and I get only one bar from my wireless router located about 20 feet away, normally 4-5 bars. Any ideas on what I did and how the heck do I fix it? Thank you in advance, you guys are the greatest. :confused:

Their may be a little switch that disables wireless on the laptop. Look around the front edges for a swith that has a picture of a monitor in parenthesis. If its not in the front check the sides also.

I can say that it's not the wireless switch. I have the little WiFi light on, if I switch it, in my case FN F2, the light goes out and I loose all WiFi. Right now I have just one bar, which I am currently connected to. Great suggestion, but I guess I need another one... Anyone?

If you are sure it is not the switch (I would manually turn the switch on and off and not rely on FN-F2) then it must be an interference issue. Not sure why it would have changed but signal strength is mostly affected by the location of my machine relative to the wireless router. Make sure you minimize interference from other sources. Another good tip that has worked for me is to try changing the channel. You can access this from your router setup. There is a good article on this whole subject from Microsoft that is easy to find via a Google search. Sorry I don't have the link.

It was wasn't the switch or the proximity. 1 ft away could only get Very Good, move 3 ft away, good, etc. I just replaced the card... problem solved.