Where is my wireless card?

Question

I have an Inspiron 8600 and according to the invoice it has an Intel Pro/Wireless 2915 dual band 802.11 minipci wireless card.  I have now bought a wireless router but nowhere on my laptop can I find any way to establish a wireless connection.  The wireless card does not appear on the device manager.  The documentation says to change the connection type to wireless under Network Settings but this is not available as an option.  Am I missing something really obvious here?

volcano11 · Answer

Look under the MiniPCI card door on the bottome of your computer to see if the card is physically present:   http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins8500/en/8500/sm/upgrades.htm#999869   If it is, go into your BIOS setup program (hit the F2 key immediately after you restart the computer) and make sure that the MiniPCI card slot is enabled in the BIOS.   Steve

tony_onz · Answer

I've opened the box and the card is installed.  I've checked the BIOS and it says that wireless is enabled.  But nowhere does Windows XP SP2 acknowledge that wireless is available.   The only thing that looks odd is that Device Manager reports that Network Controller on PCI Bus 2, device 3, function 0 has a problem.  It says to reinstall the drivers but the Reinstall Drivers option fails to  find the necessary software on Windows Update.   Is this the reason why I can't go wireless?  Any ideas how to fix it?

volcano11 · Answer

Go to the following site and download the drivers for your wireless card:   http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R138749&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4M_8600&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=7039&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=6&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=5&fileid=185741   Move the downloaded file to your 8600.  On the 8600, go into Device Manager, expand the listing for Network Adapters, uninstall the wireless adapter, and reboot your computer.  If the New Hardware Wizard comes up, cancel it, then run the driver installation file that you downloaded.   Steve

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

Where is my wireless card?

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