wireless network problem
I have a bit of a dilemma on my hands. I have Vista installed on my Averatec laptop, and it is running great, nice and fast and all. I originally installed it as an upgrade to XP SP2, and everything worked great except for a few problems I was already having like the computer not wanting to turn itself off after shutting down, and my laptop fan not always running like it should. Vista said that my processor driver was not loading properly. Anyway, I redid the computer with a clean install of Vista, and that solved all the problems I was having. However, my question is that when I install Vista that way, it suddenly does not recognize my MiniPCI internal WLAN card, and won't access any wireless networks, all of which were working great on my first install of Vista. Does anyone have any suggestions for getting the wireless card to work? I have the driver for it, but it is of course for XP.
This is a common problem in OS development.
Backwards compatibility of devices is important, so new OS' bend over backwards to port existing drivers forward. However, clean installs don't have this luxury.
1) have you tried the built-in Windows Update item on the Start menu? This frequently resolves the issue (obviously, you'll have to be on a wired network for this to work)
2) have you tried to install the XP drivers via Device Manager? If you encounter an error, what is it?
3) if these steps don't resolve your issue, record the Hardware ID for the MiniPCI internal WLAN card and post it here. I may be able to further research the issue and provide additional information about that specific card.
regards,
--Hilton Locke
http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/
Actually, I did manage to solve the problem. I'm not sure what was causing it, but I found a driver that was supposed to be for WinXP only on my computer manufacturer's website, and it was the only driver they listed that actually worked with Vista. It did solve the problem. Also, finally this morning I solved all the other problems I've had with both Vista and SP2 by installing a manufacturer BIOS update, so actually, I think Vista runs absolutely perfect with no problems or complaits now. It's great! Thanks for your help.