WAN card overheating?

Soldato
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Bangor, Northern Ireland
Hey guys, not sure if this should go here or in the Laptops section but ill give it a go :)

My mum got an HP Sleekbook for Christmas from a terrible high street computer chain, since mid February it has been losing its wireless connection to the internet intermittently, can be after minutes can be after an hour. She took it back and the "IT experts" reinstalled Windows but the problem still remains.

I was looking at the laptop and there are no issues that I could see, reinstalled the drivers for the wireless and also tested it with my router and it still loses connection so something is definitely amiss. The top left hand corner of the laptop gets very hot (65+degrees) according to THIS image of the internals the WAN card just happens to be in the area that is getting hot. (ive circled where the heat seems to be coming from)

My question is does this sound like something that actually happens? Can WAN cards overheat and do you reckon its the cause of the problems?

I would ideally like to go back to the "experts" fully armed with all the knowledge as they told my dear old mum that the problem could be because the bundled Norton AV was uninstalled and replaced with AVG :rolleyes:
 
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I assume you actually mean the wireless card (WAN is a wide area network).

When the connection goes does the adapter:

1) come up as disabled in device manager?

2) loose it's DHCP lease? (i.e. loose IP address)

Anything else that happens?
 
Sorry yeah the wireless card :o

From what ive seen it doesn't come up as disabled under device manager, it still says enabled. How would I check if it loses its DHCP lease? Im terrible with network stuff so forgive my ignorance on the matter.

Basically it will lose the connection, but will reconnect after a few minutes and then lose it again, rinse and repeat. The broadband is coming from a Sky broadband which has a dynamic IP if that makes any difference? No other devices or computers have any issues with their connection.
 
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Click on the little network connection icon in the tray:

BDBdV1X.png


=> click "Open Network and Sharing Center"

=> click on the active connection (looks like below)

ony01dD.png


=> Click details

It should have an IP address probably starting 192.168... I'm not entirely sure with Sky, but anyhow if you're not sure, when it drops out send a picture of the details page.
 
Which suggests its actually a problem with the Sky router. Can/have you checked with another laptop whether you can connect?

There are 3 other laptops, a tablet and 3 smartphones that all connect fine, also tried my own Sky router and it has the same issue.
 
That's odd. So there definitely is something restricting the laptop. Next step is software:

Disable all firewalls etc... Double check connection settings (proxies etc..).
 
That's odd. So there definitely is something restricting the laptop. Next step is software:

Disable all firewalls etc... Double check connection settings (proxies etc..).

Ive compared all the settings to a brand new Samsung laptop (connecting perfectly) and everything is the same, no proxies or anything out of place. Firewall disabled but it didn't seem to be causing any issues anyway.
 
Does sound like a hardware problem. Present all these facts at the monkey shop and see what they say. Escalate if necessary.

Thanks for the help cheech, although I originally suspected it was a hardware problem its nice to have it somewhat confirmed :) It'll be my dad taking it in this time and he doesnt take any poo so fingers crossed they sort it.
 
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