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Laptop WiFi problem

N

nsafreak

Diamond Member
Well so far I'm stumped on this one so I could use some help. I have an old Clevo D47EV that I picked up really cheap. Prior to wiping the hard drive so that I could be sure that I had a good clean install of Windows XP Pro I knew that the wireless was working. Now after a fresh install and using the same drivers that the previous owner supposedly used I can not get it to work for some odd reason.

I know that the hardware is fine because if I boot into an Ubuntu LiveCD it is able to load the drivers for the wireless USB device (it's internal, kindof odd if you ask me) and is able to connect to my wireless router. The base problem seems to come down to that the drivers will load for the device under Windows XP and it will say that the device is working properly but nothing shows up under the wireless networks that are available. I've tried disabling wireless zero config and using the utility that came with drivers off Clevo's site and haven't had any luck.

I should also note that if I take a look at the properties for the device it shows that it's transmitting packets but isn't receiving any. Any ideas?
 
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Does the Clevo have a hardware slide switch or button to turn Wi-Fi on and off?
 
Grab the device (PCI) ID of the WLAN controller from the device properties and post it, probably can find a better/newer driver if we can know the hardware/device ID.
 
Corkyg: Yes, it has a hardware slide switch on it. I have made sure that it's slid to the on position & made sure that it's working by switching it on and off and watching the device disappear from the device manager.

tcsenter: It's not a PCI device (at least it's not listed that way) but I'll give you the device ID that I have: USB\VID_0967&PID_0204\KJLEE . That's what's shown on the adapter properties in the device manager.
 
That's an old Intersil/Prism WLAN 11b chip from like 2000 that probably doesn't support WPA security under Windows. Windows Update has this driver for it:

v3.01.03 (11/04/2003)

Might try it or not.
 
tcsenter: That's the driver that it's currently running unfortunately. I may just buy an express card that can use Wireless N anyways. Frankly I think it's kindof odd to have the combo of a gigabit ethernet card but an old 802.11b wifi built in.
 
I don't think that old of a laptop is going to support ExpressCard. That vintage should be PCMCIA/Cardbus. There are also 'mini' USB WLAN adapters that you might check out. e.g.

http://airlink101.com/products/awll5088.php

http://airlink101.com/products/awll5077.php

I prefer to buy the lesser branded or even generic WLAN adapters because they typically use Realtek or Ralink chipsets, and you can download drivers straight from the chip vendor. If you buy a major brand like Linksys, Dlink, Netgear, or Belkin, they are a lot more likely to use chipsets from companies who don't release drivers publicly, such as Broadcom or Atheros. i.e. you're more likely to be stuck with whatever drivers are provided by the branding company.
 
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Yeah, I would get a USB based one except the USB ports on this laptop are toast. The internal headers that the media card reader & TV tuner are hooked up to work fine but the external connections had too much juice drawn from them and they no longer respond to any device inserted in them. You're right, it's CardBus and not ExpressCard. I'll just pick up one of those on my next trip by MicroCenter.
 
nsafreak said:
Corkyg: Yes, it has a hardware slide switch on it. I have made sure that it's slid to the on position & made sure that it's working by switching it on and off and watching the device disappear from the device manager.
Click to expand...

OK - and how about a keyboard switch? My Thinkpad has both - first the slide switch - and then a combo keystroke is needed (Fn+F5.) Check your user guide for that.
 
The user guide didn't make any mention of a combo keystroke to enable/disable wireless but I tried the function key along with all the other keys on the keyboard and nothing happened. In the end I decided to just go ahead with a CardBus 802.11n card instead which is working fine and I'd have probably bought anyways since there are some things that I want to do with wireless that'd work better with 802.11n than 802.11b.
 
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