Troubleshooting Wireless Network Connections

The Most Common Solutions For Wireless Network Problems

If you experience difficulty accessing the law school's wireless network, try the measures below which have proved to be the most common fixes.

Before setting up your wireless network, be sure you have a current anti-virus/anti-malware product installed on your computer.
Does your computer have the most recent wireless driver?

To find out, from the Start Menu choose Run and enter devmgmt.msc and press enter. This brings up the Device Manager. Expand the section below Network Adapters to find your wireless card. (see image at left for example.)

Double-click the card and choose the Driver tab. Here you can view the Driver Version and Driver Date, use this information to compare with the vendor website.

Some of the major vendors and recent drivers are listed below.

Drivers for Intel network cards can be downloaded (in Zip format) here:
Intel 12.0.4.0_x32.exe (31MB)

Drivers for Dell TrueMobile cards (Dell branded cards *NOT* provided by Intel) can be downloaded here:
Dell_multi-device_A17_R174291.exe (92MB)

If you have an HP (or Compaq branded), Toshiba, Sony, or Gateway laptop there are no "standard" drivers available for these units. You can enter your laptop's model information into these pages to get updated drivers for your specific laptop unit:

If the steps above do not resolve connectivity issues, please send an e-mail to lawtech@smu.edu with the information listed below. It is not essential that you provide all of this information but please provide as much as you can.

Model of PC
Model/Brand of Network Card (see #3 above)
SMU ID Number
E-mail Address
Physical address (MAC) of your card
(found by double-clicking on your network card icon, selecting "Support" tab, and clicking on Details.) Noted as Physical Address.
Date and time issues were encountered
Location where issues were encountered (room name or number)