Wireless Network Adapter problem

I have a HP Compaq 6535s laptop and am having trouble with the wi-fi. I'm running Vista and had to download a load of drivers from the HP website.

They were all installed correctly except for the one for the wireless card (Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/draft-n) When i check it in Device Manager, it says Error Code 31: (The device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device (Code 31).

I've re-checked that i have the most up-to-date drivers and it tells me that i do. Last night, I tried to uninstall the driver so that i could then try to reload the the driver and see if that worked, but I think I uninstalled the adapter itself because it disappeared from the device manager altogether. I did a system restore and it came back but I still can't fix the driver problem.

I don't have the laptop with me in work, so i won't be able to check any possible solutions til i get home, but in the mean time i found this: and was wondering if this is a good idea? I'm not very tech savvy and not too sure if this would be a good route to go down.

Cheers

Biggins

Deleted User wrote: »

...in the mean time i found this: and was wondering if this is a good idea? I'm not very tech savvy and not too sure if this would be a good route to go down.

Cheers

NEVER mess with the registry unless your sure about what your doing, having made a back-up and know how to put back the back-up from a number of situations in case of slip-ups.
If you want to go down this route use extreme caution otherwise take the system to someone who genuinely knows their stuff.

Probably a silly question but when you uninstalled the driver you wanted gone, did you then reboot?

Cheers for the reply. I won't be going near the registry so.

It's not a silly question, as I didn't reboot at all. Should i have?

Biggins

Deleted User wrote: »

Cheers for the reply. I won't be going near the registry so.

It's not a silly question, as I didn't reboot at all. Should i have?

Yes, this is done to clear out code (from the registry and hidden root start-up files, etc) and instructions for normal starting up files for applications etc for example.
If any previous material is left in, a conflict of apps, files, resources, etc can happen and you can get a whole lot of different possible errors and error messages.

To use an analogy: you don't jump from a moving car without stopping first.
Stop the car engine, jump out, start up again.... otherwise... OUCH!

The withdrawal of code, etc happens seconds after turn on.
You will note for a second or two there might be a slower pause at starting up after reboot.
This is normal. Its the clear-out part too.

Nice one biggins. Will try uninstalling the driver again this evening and re-booting.

UPDATE: I've uninstalled the driver, then ran the setup.exe file that came with the drivers i downloaded from the HP site. It said it was installing and then starting the adapter (broadcom 802.11) but it has disappeared from the device manager.

I rebooted in case thats what i was doing wrong but its still not there. Anyone with any ideas?

This is beginning to wreck my head, any further advice would be gratefully received.

Fysh

More possibly-dumb questions that used to catch me out when trying to do remote support on wireless connectivity:

1) Have you checked your BIOS to make sure it's enabled? (If it was previously working, it should be enabled, but it doesn't hurt to check - usually you get in by hitting Del or F2 during startup. Don't change anything unless you're certain what it will do.)

2) Does your laptop have a hardware switch for turning wireless on or off? (Either a physical switch on the side, or a function-key combination like Fn + F8)

3) Have you checked the control panel for any Broadcom panels? Dell have an infuriating tendency of installing software for the NIC that automatically turns it off when you run on battery power, for instance, and it can be a real pain.

Cheers for the reply.

1) Yeah, this was the first thing I checked, and its enabled. Its only new, so there is no way to be sure if it was working previously.

2) It does have a button alright and its lit up with an orange colour. It's supposed to be blue when working correctly. When i press it nothing happens.

3) Have you checked the control panel for any Broadcom panels? Dell have an infuriating tendency of installing software for the NIC that automatically turns it off when you run on battery power, for instance, and it can be a real pain. Haven't seen anything, but will check when i get home from work.


My mate seems to think that its incompatible with Vista, but it came with Vista Basic pre-installed, so it couldn't be that. I got it in Japan, and all the menus, warnings etc. were in Japanese so i installed an English version of Vista Business on it. I never checked if the wireless was working before i wiped the Japanese version off it.

Fysh

I presume the HP drivers you mentioned downloading came from here? (I've linked to the OS selection page as I'm not sure whether you're running 32 or 64 bit Vista, but either way you should be able to get a supported driver for it )

Also: Have you tried the previous version of the Broadcom driver they've got there as well?

On a separate note, Broadcom's website doesn't seem to list drivers for WLAN cards but does give you this guide on how to identify the WLAN card in your machine, which may help you find an alternate driver that will work. (Some Googling suggests that there are Dell laptops with the same card on the market, which in turn should mean that there are dell drivers online for the card which you could try, though that might lead to further problems...)

Yeah thats where I got it from alright (32 bit).

I was unaware there was a previous version of the Broadcom driver available. I'll give that a bash as well.

Cheers for the link, if all else fails i'll find out which one it is that i have and see if i can get a dell driver.