Received a Venue pro 11 Core M (7140)  last Friday.  I'm having issues with the wifi when the device goes to sleep and then powered up.  BTW,  I've worked in tech for several years. Symptoms- Device powers down when not in use. When the unit it powered back on the wifi may or may not work consistently. Often "Unidentified network" is displayed on the connection tab when the unit is powered on.  It may recover after 30+ sec or require the wifi adapter to be reset (e.g. turning airplane mode on and off).  A reset of the adapter consistently solves the issue but this shouldn't be considered a solution to the issue. Routers- I have two routers in my home- Lynksys and a Actiontec C1000a (provided by my dsl provider).  It appears to communicate better with the Lynksys.  The speed test are terrible - 4mb up and 5 down.  Other systems in my house are > 20mb up/down.  I have the dell right next to the router(s).  Also I'm lucky enough to have another Dell Venue Pro i3 in the house. It doesn't exhibit any issues + the speedtests are about 40% better- connecting to either router doesn't impact performance.  It uses a Dell mini wifi 1537 without bluetooth built in. I believe the culprit is this Intel 7265 mini wifi/BT card used in this model. Or more specifically the drivers for the card.  I have even updated the drivers to the latest published by intel last December.  The ones that came with the unit were much older but still had the same issues.  The updated drivers didn't seem to solve any issues for me. I have tried various modifications to the advanced settings of the card and have figured that setting the band to only G seems to make things better- at least with the lynksys router.     I like this tablet; however, the inconsistent wifi will drive me to hate it.   There are options to upgrade the wifi mini card to another brand, etc.; however, that's about $40 I have to spend.  On a positive note, the stylus is working perfectly. Thoughts? Suggestions re: wifi issues? b

What do you mean by "powers down when not in use"?   Are you referring to the normal connected standby (sleep)?   You can disable this in power management if so desired but that will obviously have a negative impact on your battery life.   I'd guess that the 7265 doesn't like one of your routers or the configuration.   I've tried multiple 7140s on my home network without any problems.  I'm running an ASUS AC2400 without any problems.   Even on the first floor of my house (which is about as far as I can get from the router upstairs), I can get >70 Mbps download speeds.   My device will automatically reconnect after sleep as well.   I'm running the stock (Dell) driver.   I'd try going back to that as the first step in troubleshooting.   You might also try connecting to a router somewhere outside of your house to see how that goes.

Often, installing  the "latest and greatest" driver from the vendor may not yield the best results.   Our drivers are modified for Dell hardware.

I tried upstairs within 15 feet of the router and I'm getting between 150 and 175 Mbps, so I can tell you there isn't a problem with the 7265 or our native drivers.   

"What do you mean by "powers down when not in use?"   - when it goes to sleep. 

"You can disable this in power management if so desired but that will obviously have a negative impact on your battery life." - that's not a valid solution for a mobile device.  

"...installing  the "latest and greatest" driver from the vendor..." - it didn't make a difference anyways.  Still same results.  I've tested this thoroughly.

" I've tried multiple 7140s on my home network without any problems..."- That Asus is a darn nice router!  I connected the device today to a high end router and it seemed to behave very well. I do not recall any "unidentified networks" and I used it all day.  With regards to using it all day, I find the battery life dismal even with the brightness turned to low but that's another topic of discussion.

I see you replied again re: the drivers.  There are tons of complaints about this card and drivers which are installed in non-dell products.  If you look you'll see on the Intel forums people doing the typical "class action" argument re: the issues surrounding the card/drivers. BTW, I'll never get the speeds you are getting considering I'm only 40mb dl and 20 up DSL customer.  

I think the deal is the router probably is to blame; however, my Samsung 12.2, Note III, daughters Venue i3 work find with what I have installed in the home. 

I'm still giving this device a shot.   Thanks for replying.  

I'm assuming you've checked for router firmware updates, made sure you are on a relatively clean channel, etc?   If so, can you please send me your exact router model numbers so that I can get them to the comms engineering team for awareness?   They can push back to Intel.

Thanks.

Brian B- today the device really started acting up. Essentially not allowing me to download from the MSstore, denying any changes to the windows update options, profile corruption occasionally showing up on boot up, etc.        It was really odd.   I hope it's not the SSD.   I spent a good two hours attempting to salvage. No Restorehealth or Scannow routines, etc helped.

I'm in the middle of re-configuring the device  with a new load of Windows + updates and should be able to test this again with the stock wifi card drivers later this evening.  Not how I wanted to spend my day.

Thanks.... more later.

After the full windows reinstall the tablet has been working much better.  I still get the unidentified network when it comes out of sleep; however, it is not as bad as before. The router it is connected to is an Actiontec C1000a- not top shelf equipment.  

I just got one login profile error today which was odd. Basically when I log in the system accepts my password but then acts as if I'm brand new and displays the "Installing apps", etc.  The error indicates it cannot my profile.  After a reboot all is well.  I'm not certain but I think the ssd may be ify.  Thoughts?  This  did show up consequently right after activating Norton.  Thoughts?  

For anyone interested..... Situation changed.  The Venue began to exhibit the same issues before my last re-install.  Here's what happened:

1) Unable to install from the MS Store. When I tried I'd get the message "...problem, your internet connection is too slow, please connect to a faster..." which wasn't the case at all.  The bandwidth is perfectly fine.   If you google this it is not uncommon error. Lots of different resolutions.

2) When I attempted to apply a windows update, it would act like was working then quickly error out.  If I tried to change the windows update settings, it would display a message similar to "You need to be Administrator...."  Problem is I am the Admin for this PC.    

• sfc /scannow   - produced no errors
• "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth" -  Indicated the " The component store corruption was repaired."  Made sense but this made no difference with fixing the issue.
• New profiles did not help either.

I believe Norton Antivirus might be to blame here. That's the only smoking gun I can see.  My profile in Windows is getting corrupted by something.

This time no Norton. Just Defender.   Wish me luck.  If it tanks a 3rd time it's back to Dell.

I guess this is my blog now...

Latest... the system exhibited the same issues yesterday afternoon. This time I contacted Dell Support (really dell in India). I got in touch with a very pleasant person to work with. In short Dell spent near 4 hours logged into the machine to try and figure out why Admin rights were changing.  Windows update were re-applied using the Dell Support tool, etc.   In the end, they ended up resetting the system (re-installing) which seems to correct the issue for a short period.  I already knew this.

Current- the tablet seemed to run perfectly fine for about 4 - 5 hours after the reset. Only Office was installed post re-install.   Then without notice (or any user interaction) the Admin rights were changed to essentially Standard. Leaving me no means to perform Admin procedures.  The difference this go around is that while the tablet was working properly, I created another local Admin account just in case this issue showed up again.  Well it did.  This time I logged in using the alternative Admin account, reset my main profile to Admin (essentially tricking the system) and then logged back in using my primary account.  This corrected the issue for now which was nice.

If this shows up one more time, the unit will be returned (not repaired) as any Dell tech would assume a fresh re-load of windows did the trick. Thing is it does temporary but after X amount of hours  it starts to show odd symptoms.   No virus or odd 3rd party software installed too.

Cheers...

Very odd issues - I've not seen those before on any Venue Pro.   My thought would be to do a clean install of Windows as the problems seem to be software related.

On your wireless issues, there is an updated Intel driver that will be released later this month.   It should improve performance of the Intel card after a sleep cycle.

Brian B, I ended up returning that unit yesterday.   I should have a new one tomorrow but this go around I decided to try the 5y71 processor which really wasn't much more.  I really don't anticipate this issue showing up. My daughter's i3 venue pro 11 works very well.  Looking forward to it.