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Problem with wLAN driver after XP reinstall
I have an Inspiron 1501 Laptop that was purchased back at Christmas 2007. Because of what I think was either a virus or just a chance error, I had to reformat my hard drive and reinstall XP Home. Most of the missing drivers I had have been easy to restore, but I'm having problems with the wireless driver. I have the Dell 1395 Wireless Mini-Card; however, every driver I've tried to install doesn't appear in the device manager, even after rebooting. Does anyone know why the driver wouldn't "take" to my laptop correctly? I don't get any error messages during or after installation.
Edit: I should add that I have seen a lot of problems similar to this, but every solution that I've come across hasn't worked for me, and I've been searching for a good six hours.
austindixon
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August 12th, 2008 20:00
That was an amazingly fast reply. According to the black drivers CD that came with the laptop, the Chipset was already found, but the NSS was doing the same thing the wLAN driver is. I extracted and installed it multiple times, and every time after rebooting it wasn't showing up as being installed.
I have two chipset drivers shown as being installed: the ricoh and the ATI.
This might be helpful. in the device managers window, I have three unknown ?/! devices: Base System Device, Network Controller, PCI Device. I'm assuming the BSD is related to the NSS somehow, and the latter two are related to the wLAN problem. Also, the only network adapter that's showing is the Broacom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller.
Another point that I should make is that the Windows Wireless Zero Config tool is non-existent. The Dell Wireless Utility icon was restored to the control panel after I "reinstalled" a driver, but it does nothing when it's clicked on.
volcano11
28K Posts
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August 12th, 2008 20:00
Did you install the Notebook System Software and the Chipset drivers before even attempting to install other device drivers? Installing these drivers in the correct order is absolutely essential. Without the chipset drivers, Windows cannot recognize nor properly install drivers for many other devices.
Steve
volcano11
28K Posts
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August 12th, 2008 21:00
It doesn't look like the drivers were installed in the correct order. You can try uninstalling all of the drivers, installing the chipset drivers and NSS, then reinstalling the drivers. Sometimes this works, but most of the time, one has to start over, reinstalling Windows, then intalling the drivers in the correct order.
Steve
austindixon
4 Posts
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August 12th, 2008 21:00
Rparker1961
5 Posts
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April 6th, 2009 15:00
I am having the exact same issue with my 1501 / 1395 card, however before I reinstalled ANYTHING I researched it for a week and got everything together before I did it.
I installed everything like the Dell site said in the order it gave me.
Then, when I looked in the device manager it would have a yellow ? where the PCI device should be, and when I went to download the driver for the 1395 card (which took me almost a day to find because you have to hunt forever) it would not install properly.
So after a day of looking thru the website forums and tech stuff and post ect, ect, I found it (at least I thout I had)
Dells ftp site said I needed to download it, then extract it but instead of running it from the zipped file said that I needed to type it into the file screen like this.
C:\DELL\DRIVERS\R191674 and hit run.
I did that and I watched in my device manager to see what happened, the yellow ? went away and I thought I was good.
But no, I still have no connection, It will see any network I am near, but it still will not connect.
What am I doing wrong?