I've spent days trying to resolve this issue on this laptop. I purchased it as a Christmas gift for my son, only to find that it's got a problem with wifi connectivity. What's crazy though is that it connects perfectly to my home router, and will connect perfectly at two different coffee shops/bakeries I've used for testing yesterday. But at a local Starbucks and at my sons work location (which is also a public hotspot) it only shows a 'limited' connection, and you get no Internet access. I was also told that it could see and connect to his iPhone in 'hotspot' mode or whatever, but couldn't get to the Internet thru that either.
Basics: Inspiron 15 (3421), Windows 8 x64 clean install, and all current Dell drivers installed (from the Dell site.)
Fwiw, I have a long tech background with computers and laptops, so I have no problem getting into and checking or resetting things. As I said, it has all the latest Dell drivers for everything on it, including the most current (as of today) wireless 1704 driver. Also, I've read numerous forum posts by others with similar problems, so I've seen many of the things suggested to try to fix wifi connectivity issues (i.e. set it to maximum performance, don't let the system turn it off, etc.) I'm still checking various posts for others ideas, but it's frustrating to have it working here at home and have to run up to a Starbuck to see if it's fixed or still flaky.
Even so, it seems to me that the evidence that it connects perfectly to some hotspot routers and my AT&T wifi router at home makes it pretty clear the hardware is fine. It does see all the hotspot routers and lists their names and it can/does connect and get an IP (verified via 'ipconfig /all'). So I think the laptop/wlan hardware is functional, but there's something wrong with the drivers or some setting that is enabled or disabled, or set wrong, that just doesn't communicate properly with some of the generic hotspot routers or configurations...like the 'Google Starbucks' hotspot down the street.
I think by now Dell must have a very good idea what the problem is, even if they aren't widely publicizing it for whatever reason. But I'd like to know what could make this thing not connect to some very public hotspot routers, and be just fine connecting to others. It has to be something set in the laptop that's making it overly strict or specific, such that maybe older routers won't work.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks...