Dell Latitude E6420 with all latest updates running Windows 7. Using the same image from my old hard drive.
A few weeks ago windows noted i was having hard drive failure so since this is a company issues laptop, Dell sent me a new hard drive. The image of the hard drive was installed on the new hard drive and swapped out.
I thought it was a dual monitor issue or even when docked but now after getting it back from the company where they thought the imaging didn't complete correctly, I have narrowed it down to not being the monitors, the cables, the docking station or the power settings but just a plain issue of when the lid is closed the wifi doesn't work.
I can't even have the lid opened and two monitors plugged into the laptop, one using a hdmi and one using a standard vga cable without the wifi acting up. The laptop will allow the built in display and one external monitor only.
What I noticed is when you click the icon on the bottom right corner of the screen to see all wireless networks in range with the lid opened i can see several, usually around 12. Once I close the lid to use just the one external display, within a minute, the 12 drops to 3 or 4 with mine showing at the top. I try to reconnect and after a few seconds, a message that windows is unable to connect to the network and to troubleshoot.
The power settings for the lid closed are all set to do nothing, even the battery option is set to do nothing. The wireless power management option that allows the computer to turn off the power to the device has also been unchecked.
To verify everything is ok with the wireless adapter installed, i uninstalled the adapter software and reinstalled it. The wifi still doesn't work right with the lid closed.
So before I had to ship the old hard drive back to dell, i began swapping the old and new back and forth and when the old was in the laptop, everything worked fine. It could be docked, lid closed and both external monitors used to view the output and wireless worked fine. Put the new hard drive in with the same image of the computer (this was prior to sending it back to my company and having them just wipe it clean and start fresh) and it still wouldn't work.
Now the tech at my company states that the laptop works fine when docked and using two external monitors and stays connected to their WLAN network.
There is also NO ethernet cable to my docking station and I don't see that as an issue since I have now am NOT connected to a docking station.
Its just the laptop with one monitor attached to it with the lid open to work. Close the lid, wifi does something other than work. It recognizes networks, but not all like with the lid open. And it won't connect to any of them.
Its not a router issue because I went to my neighbors and I can't connect but they can. I have a mifi hotspot and it won't connect even with it within a few feet of the laptop. It all revolves around the fact the lid is closed and the new hard drive.