I think I finally got the GPS working on the Dell 5720 Sprint EVDO broadband card which I have had for 3 months, no thanks to Dell
Dell sells this card and it’s supposed to have GPS in it. Only, it doesn’t seem to. The help in the Dell Mobile Broadband Card Utility tells you how to use the GPS option in the tools menu, and/or the GPS Status button in the card manager. So here’s the card manager:
I don’t see me no GPS Status button. I contacted Dell tech support a few times over the last few months, and they eventually refer me to Sprint, which is ludicrous since Sprint a> sucks, b> doesn’t have customer support to speak of c> doesn’t support this card. I tried once.
So lo and behold on my final chat session with tech support tonight, the one where I’m planning on getting mad and demanding 40% of my purchase price refunded for false advertising, the man in India types these magic words: “The Dell Mobile Broadband Card Utility (DMBCU) determines the presence of GPS software when the software is installed.” Aha. Aha!! Registry.
So I fire up the process monitor. I run the DMBCU and capture events. I search for GPS and I find on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Novatel Wireless\NextGenCommon a key called GPSHWStatus:
…and it’s set to 0 or not there…
I’m running Vista x64 - this key would be different on 32 bit windows machines, should be the same but without the Wow6432Node\ part. So, on to registry editor:
Indeed, it is there and set to 0. So ah sets it to 1:
And the next time I run the DMBCU, it installs a driver(!) for … the GPS!
and would ya lookie here:
It seems to work. I’m inside and I haven’t checked it out yet, but when I hit that button it finds the GPS on COM6 and starts to search for satellites.
I did all this while the Dell tech support guy was connected to my machine remotely. He tried to pull down the Tools menu to look for the GPS entry, moused over all icons in my tray, and then told me I would have to contact Sprint. [sarcasm]I’m SO glad I allowed the remote connection.[/sarcasm] When I got angry about that, he spent 3 minutes looking up information and then mentioned the bit about the install. I did the rest and then near the end when I said “Did you see that? It installed a driver!” he says to me “Great. Glad we could fix your trouble.” Uh huh.
I hope this helps someone. I have seen many posts on the Dell Community forums about this with no solution.
February 15th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Thank you! It works.
I made the registry change on my Dell Latitude D630 with the Verizon 5720. Restarted the DMBCU and the GPS drivers were installed an the icon popped up on the toolbar.
I got a timeout when searching for satellites. I was inside the office so I figured I would need to go outside. I had it running in the car while driving home and it found 8 satellites.
Originally I thought it may not work since my card has not been activated with Verzion for broadband access. When I ordered the D630 I added the 5720 just in case I may use it down the road. At $60/month I’m not in need of mobile broadband.
I installed iGuidance 4.0 and set the GPS port to Comm 9 which the DMBCU was reporting. As soon as I started the iGuidance program zoomed to my location. I’m heading out for a ride to see it in action!
February 26th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Thank you! Got mine working now!
February 26th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
PS: I have Windows XP Pro, so I just searched the registry for GPSHWStatus.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Thank you so much for this, I added this card to my XPS M1330 with Win XP Pro. I did a search in my registry for GPSHWStatus, changed the option from 0 to 1. It worked like a champ, thank you for taking the time to write this!
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:52 am
Ryan,
I have the same problem as you with my Dell D420 with an original 5720 card and XP installed. I can launch the GPS screen in the DMBCU but it does “searching” and does not find satellites. I am on Verizon.
In Device Manager under Ports, I see “Dell Wireless 5720 VZW Mobile Broadband (EVDO Rev-A) Minicard GPS Port (COM8), which would indicate that the driver installed. It is a Novatel Wireless Driver v3.0.3.0 dated 2/8/2008.
Anyone else get this working? Which driver are you using?
I have another hard drive (new) and I’m thinking of re-installing XP from scratch to see if that might have something to do with it… but I probably won’t get around to that until next month.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:21 am
You need to be outside or in a room full of windows for the satellite search to work. It worked for me once I went outside.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Minimalist
I have tried outside with no luck.
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:18 am
Hi There!!!
Thanks a lot man! Thanks. I need another favor. Do you know how to re program the card. Curently I am outside USA and I want to configure the card according to a local CDMA operator. Is this possible? Please mail me with your kind heart. I’ll be grateful to you!
Regards,
Nirjhar
Dhaka, Bangladesh.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:18 am
Thanks a million! Worked for me for the first time today. Now if I could just figure out how to get Sprint SmartView to work with the card… Then again… do I really need to…?
May 12th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Yeah, Sprint SmartView works about 1 billion times better like when coming out of sleep, having auto-connect actually connect, etc.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
How did you get Smartview to find the card and how did you configure it?
May 15th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Ah, sorry, my bad. I didn’t get it to find this card, I have another card that sprint sells that is fine coming out of sleep etc, it’s an expresscard. Also I complained at Dell long and hard and they couldn’t help me with that. I think it’s possible though, I just haven’t had time to work on it.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
I have the 5520 (Cingular) card. This procedure also works for this card. It is the same key, in my case it’s in HKLM\Software\Novatel Wireless\NextGenCommon, as he said because I’m using a 32 bit OS.
Thanks Kurt!
June 24th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I figured out how to install the Sprint Smartview software on xp 64. It is a matter of altering the setup.msi file. Download the smartview software from sprint and run it. It will decompress the setup files to a temp folder, then begin the setup routine, at which point it will immediately display an error message saying that you have to have Windows XP service pack 2 or windows vista. At that point, locate the folder that the documents have been uncompressed to in your “c:\documents and settings\\local settings\temp” folder. In my case it was named “WZSE0.TMP”. Copy this folder to another location somewhere on your hard drive BEFORE pressing the “OK” button on that error message window, because when you press ok, the temporary install files are deleted. Then install ORCA from Microsoft. In the WZSE0.TMP folder, right click on setup.msi and open with orca. Locate the “LaunchCondition” variable and delete its os check condition. Save the file and run it. It’ll work then.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Eric,
Right, but does it work with the Dell device?
July 17th, 2008 at 6:50 am
New update for Verizon cards:
http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R185648&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=253566
Nothing yet for Sprint, etc.
July 19th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Fascinating stuff. Thank you.
Running Windows XP SP2, try as I might, I can’t get this to work. (Oh, is the “1″ value decimal or hexadecimal?).
Several versions of Dell’s Broadband Utility will not install if it’s not a Dell system. The one that I have that does install is 2.05.31.26 with a driver version 3.0.0.3
I have spent a good part of today trying to discover if there is an updated DB utility that will work on a non-Dell machine and would give me the GPS option.
I’m on ATT/Cingular, btw.
Thanks for a fascinating and helpful read, in any case!
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Right, I would LOVE to get a bugfixed version for Sprint. Whenever I come out of sleep it’s a bear to reconnect, the only way to guaranty is to remove the network device (if it’s there) and the modem device in device manager and then scan for hardware changes.
It sucks to come out of sleep and then while you’re on batter spend 4-5 minutes screwing around getting the thing back online. The bugfix list shows bugfixes that look like they might take care of this. Only problem is, Verizon only at the moment.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I have a very similiar problem with my dell mobile broadband card utility (Verizon). Dell continues to log on to my brand new laptop remotely and tell me that I need to contact Verizon. I have tried everything including looking for updates, reinstalling the software, etc with no luck. After stumpling upon this site I tried searching the registry with all of the key workds I could think of but haven’t been able to find it. Any suggestions?
October 1st, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Worked for me, thanks all for the information.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
This works Great!!! Thanks for the legwork.