Why is my Dell laptop (from Dell.com) not able to connect to the internet, at times?

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It's Dell Inspiron 15R, Model # 5537. I bought approximately in September 2013. It has Intel i7, 4th generation with 16gb of Ram. I'm using Windows 8 (not 8.1). I bought from Dell.com. But here are some examples of when it works and it doesn't work.

1) I'm at home just coming back from school, I open it up it works perfectly. I use it for about 30 minutes then close it. I use the bathroom, then eat. I come back and it can't connect to the internet anymore. No one else in the house is using it and it's password protected so no one outside is using it. I have to restart my computer and then it works again.

2) It's the weekend and I'm using the computer and my family is also using it and I have no problem as well. I close the computer go downstairs to put the clothes in the dryer then come back up.When I open the laptop I can't connect to the internet anymore. I tried disconnect wireless and then reconnecting but nothing has changed. Then I restarted the computer and it worked okay.

3) I'm at school, connecting to the internet just fine and then it suddenly stops working. I put on airplane mode and then trying to reestablish the connection and it has worked before, but not this time. I have to restart my computer in order to connect again.

4) I'm at the school Library and it's working just fine I close the computer, get up and stretch for about 10 seconds, then open my computer again. But it won't connect to the internet at all. I check the status and it says it's connected when I look at the list of networks. But when I use the arrow and hover over the network Icon (the pictures of bars rising from left to right) it says that it's searching/identifying for internet connection and would do that for 5 minutes with no kind of results. I tried to go to Airplane mode and then switching back the wireless on, but that wasn't successful. I've tried resetting my computer but that didn't work. I've tried a different network that wasn't my school and then going back to my school's network connection and for some reason that worked.

5) I'm at work, the first time I used the wifi I had to type in the name of the wireless connection and it works.I connect to "Hidden Network" and type in the name of the network. It works. The next time I used the wifi my Dell saved the name and connection so I tried connecting to it and it wouldn't work. I go to "Hidden Network" and type in the name again but I couldn't establish internet connection. I've tried turn my wi-fi on and off to see if that would work, it didn't. I restarted my computer to see if there was any success, but there wasn't. Windows offered a diagnosis, but it has to be connected to the internet in order to diagnose it -_- So that wasn't helpful. And to this day I can't able to connect to my works internet, at all.

My problems with the connection is happening more and more frequently. It's been working fine until February, that's when it first starting to act up.


Can anyone tell me why it's happening and tell me how to fix it (in details, or a step by step format)?

[ragtops]

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IMHO, you have an intermittant component or connection, which is the hardest kind of issue to identify. Your machine should still be under warranty; return it to Dell. Otherwise, the problem will be biting you forever.

Good luck!
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