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47971
April 18th, 2008 11:00
Change MAC Address on Inspiron 1525?
Greetings and salutations to all and any that read!
Recently I have brought through acquisition into my possession one laptop computer, more specifically of the Inspiron species and of the 1525 breed-stock. A fine specimen indeed!
But woe is I! For at my location of employment I am required to conform to an internal MAC Address schema, ruled by a secretive conspiracy of network administrators looming high above the grounds. Their towers are quite black, you see, and if it can be put one way it is, to say, that when one becomes lost within their realm they are never to be seen again.
Thus! My plight! That is of the most urgent need to alter the MAC Address of my wireless network adapter, the Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card. Although I, being but an underling to the network overlords, am not without a share of experience in these matters, for upon the marks of years to pass I had successfully, and with the utmost ease, have been able to change MAC Addresses for mostly any card. In such instances where a road block had been reached the culprit at fault was most heinously underdeveloped drivers. My plight is this, I am in need of changing the MAC Address of my wireless adapter.
Without problem I have been able to change the MAC Address of the Ethernet adapter, but simply put the wireless adapter cannot be so simply put. After executing thine driver upgrades, (listed on the Dell Driver upgrades for this make and model of laptop, that is to say, Inspiron 1525), and after many reboots I was unable to change the MAC of my own accord. The values would be set in the Device Manager but they simply would not take, no matter which driver had I, nor how many power cyclings of either adapter or computer were performed.
Alas, I have doth attempted yonder SMAC, MadMAC, AMAC, and all thine other software applications that one can conjure up with the employment of laborious Googling, but to no avail lest it be mine own torment and eventual melancholy.
Thus!
I come hither, to seek the aide of the good folk of this community, if they will allow my intrusion, to solve such a mystery, and to bring justice and light upon such a dark circumstance as mine. Woe!
(Exit)
boucbaz
4 Posts
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April 18th, 2008 11:00
inspironuser23
6 Posts
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April 18th, 2008 19:00
You can change a MAC. It's a fairly common thing to do in Linux. Internet protocols are smart enough to compensate for MAC conflictions-- it really only matters that there are no duplicates on the local network you're connecting to, as that is the level at which they get routed.
But yes, contrary to popular believe (SOMETHING IS CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF!!!!!!!?????) changing a MAC address is very possible.
Like I said I have already changed the MAC for the built-in ethernet, and that was no problem.
Usually you just go into the device manager and view your network adapter's properties. Under the advanced tab there is a "Locally Administered MAC Address" value that you can change. THATS ALL. You don't need commercial software to do this!
So yeah. It looks like the drivers aren't supporting this. Woe!
Any developers listening??
NemesisDB
2 Intern
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7.9K Posts
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April 18th, 2008 23:00
I don't have my laptop near me at the moment (and my desktop lacks wireless) but there should be an option for 'local address' or 'local administered address' or something like that in the wireless card driver's advanced properties. If you can't find it, reply back, and I will tell you its exact name. That is the field where you can enter a new MAC.
Failing driver support (which really should be there), it's possible to change a setting in the windows registry to accomplish the same goal. I have never tried this but I've seen links the procedure on google. If you can't change it at the driver level, I'll see what I can do about helping you with this method.
edit: I didn't read your reply very carefully. Double check the driver settings and also make sure you have the most recent driver from Dell (post your driver version and OS if you don't mind).
inspironuser23
6 Posts
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April 19th, 2008 01:00
The driver is the most current one, version 4.170.25.17
I am running Windows Vista
As I said above I have already tried the device manager, "Locally Administered MAC Address" as well as in the registry.
I think the drivers may be bad and not allow a change :(
I have about a week or so to decide if I am going to return this laptop..
inspironuser23
6 Posts
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April 22nd, 2008 00:00
SOLVED (sort of)
Switched to Ubuntu 8.04 and got ndiswrapper going and used Step 2e from the Ubuntu documentation on getting wireless working.
After wireless was working I dropped to a shell and did:
ifconfig wlan0 hw ether [mac address]
Everything is working great. The new version of Ubuntu is pretty slick might I add. Major fixes etc, a lot of previous annoyances rounded off. I'm loving it, especially since I only had Vista for a week and already I had mega virii. (VISTA ONLY PROVIDES THE ILLUSION OF SAFETY)
DELL-Chris B
2 Intern
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1.1K Posts
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April 22nd, 2008 11:00
Thanks for following up with this information!
Duffy45
4 Posts
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October 8th, 2008 04:00
I have the same problem and switching to Ubuntu is not something I can do. Has anyone else been able to change their MAC address?
I have the same adapter & driver on a XPS M1530 laptop.
rigorkrad
12 Posts
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February 17th, 2011 23:00
i too have not been able to change the mac address
studio xps 1340, dell wireless 1510 card
whats is interesting to report that the only mac address that i can actually successfully been able to change to is DE:AD:BE:EF:CA:FE ! every other mac address i have tried won't go through. i was thinking of shopping around for another wireless card to see if that helps. like an intel
creeras
5 Posts
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May 26th, 2011 02:00
WoW, DE:AD:BE:EF:CA:FE, Me too possible.
In my case, all 0a-0a-0a-0a-xx-xx format is possible.