My mad experiment

[unfaithfulsfan]

Ok, I have nothing better to do. Actually I'm on disability & I'm cheap. In any event, I put 7 on a 2005 Dell latitude d600 laptop. I can't get the wireless card driver to work. What's more bizarre is that it would not work when I tried it on XP either. Wondering whether I should try a USB wireless dongle or should I just stick with plain old ethernet. The thing is that I remember the wireless card worked before I had to reload XP because of repetitive BSODs. Originally thought it was a hardware issue but diags showed everything cool. Any suggestions or ideas? Thanks!

[KnightRid]

manually download the driver from Dell's website. You would think older equipment on newer os's would be supported but sometimes they are not included.

[kenc51]

If Mike's suggestion doesn't work, try linux.
It has better hardware support and since you have the time; it's something new to tinker with ;-)

[unfaithfulsfan]

I should have mentioned I tried the driver from Dell. I even looked at the original specs to verify which card was installed. It's the Broadcom Mini-PCI 1350 or 1370. Not sure off the top of my head. For some reason Windows won't find the driver automatically. If I take it by the hand and lead it to the driver, it gets busy installing it then I get the and "The device did not install successfully......etc., etc., error. Wired works just fine.

I was actually thinking Ubuntu but I'm only mildly familiar with Linux so I need some advice on which version to use if that's even a factor. The primary reason I'm dicking around with this is that I need something for my wife to play Pogo games on so I can use my desktop for all the things I need to do such as web site maintenance, music/photo/video editing, etc.. For that reason, I don't know if Pogo supports any OS besides Windows & Mac.

Still have my 3 yo HP laptop but the video chip is fubar and I'm looking for a motherboard for just an arm instead of an arm and a leg. Found a couple on eBay but not 100% sure whether they're 100% and thus far no response from sellers. Most seem to have something wrong with them. I don't have the tools to attempt to re-solder the video. I also don't know, with my hands shaking like they are from nerve damage, if I'd even want to risk applying that much heat near the main board even if I had the tools.

I'm going to keep plugging away at it to see what, if anything, I can get to work. Worse comes to worst I'll just buy a cheap switch, make a patch cord, run it from the entertainment center under the rug in the living room to Karen's favorite chair and let her win her badges there!

Thanks for the help!

[KnightRid]

Did you try something like this - http://www.official-drivers.com/install ... d=broadcom

Never used that site but maybe it will find problems and fix them.

Maybe the wireless card is bad..?? If so, could you just switch the wireless from the other laptop to this one?

[unfaithfulsfan]

Hmmmm. I wondered if the card was bad but before I reinstalled the OS I'm 99.9% sure it was working. The reason I did a clean install is because I was getting constant BSOD "IRQL not less or equal" or something to that effect. Dell & MSoft both pointed to recent hard-/software install that did not complete but nothing had been added. After the fresh install have not seen the error but now I have this driver issue. That's how I wound up with this laptop to begin with.

The former owner had brought it to me a year or so ago complaining about the crashes. I could never duplicate the error no matter how hard I tried, even after 6 months. As soon as she'd take it home, she'd get the blue screen. I think I even posted on here about it. I even went to her house to see if it was something bizarre like a power surge or brownout or some similar anomaly but it would not appear. She followed the steps I gave her to boot thinking she might have been trying to start programs too quickly while the system was still coming up. In the interim someone gave her a Toshiba laptop which I cleaned up for her. Faster CPU, more memory all the way around. She ultimately just gave me the Dell.

I figured I could make it work well enough for my wife to play Pogo and use Word to edit her recipes for the culinary classes she teaches. Unfortunately, it has been one giant pain in the nads . I'll try the site you recommended first then, failing that, I'll see if the card is compatible. If not, I'll just go with a wired solution. Still wondering if the USB option would work. I don't know why it wouldn't.

Thanks for the help, KnightRid!!

[KnightRid]

For shits and giggles I installed LinuxMint on an old Dell E1505 and got the wireless working with following this - http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 14#p546000 - last reply on the page if that link doesnt go right to it.

No I did have to pick the b43-fwcutter after selecting the installer as it did not ask if I wanted it to install and i wanted to make sure it was there. Restarted and it showed as off, turned on with the keyboard and bam, it is working great.

Dunno if that will help you or not.

[unfaithfulsfan]

Still could not get it to work. Card must be dead. That's the only thing I can figure. Did not try HP card. Just said to hell with it and bought a sub-$10 USB dongle from Amazon that works like a charm. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MT ... UTF8&psc=1

The only down side is that it won't auto-connect to my router on reboot. Not a prob for me but my anti-tech wife will have trouble.