Wifi (Bigfoot, Alienware M18xr2) connection issue

Hi All,

I am struggling to get the wifi to work...well only with some devices. I am tecchie enough to know that I have an odd problem, but not tecchie enough to solve it. I have the latest MS available Win 8 installed on the lappie (M18xr2 fully loaded, including Bigfoot 1103).

Firstly I couldn't install the Win 7 Bigfoot drivers from Dell as it indicates that the hardware is not supported in this version of Windows. I have managed to get drivers installed via an update and search for drivers.

Everything looks like it ought to work, with the exception that I have one "Other Device - Unknown device flag in Control Panel. That being said, I think that might be for the free fall sensor or something non-networky...but I'm not smart enough to be certain about that.

Ignoring the above, I have working wired , and wireless network access to one of my home wifi routers - it all works with these, flawlessly.

Here's the problem though - it refuses to connect to any of the other home wifi routers (different SSID, different password, identical security settings as far as I am aware). It also cannot connect to the wifi via my iphone tethering, which I can connect to with everything else. I also cannot connect to wifi at client sites, which I can via every other route.

Amongst all the fiddling, I have tried disabling firewall in case that was part of the problem, but no dice. Any thoughts? Getting fairly desperate with this as there doesn't seem to be much discussion on it.

As an additional comment - the airplane mode issue also seems to occur (when you turn it off, you have to disable and re-enable the adapter to see any wifi networks).

Thanks,

Digit100100