Computer Help Required!

[.]

Ok, so I'm sending my wife to Alaska with a laptop we got from her mother. Her mother told us that her tech guy at work said the laptop needs a reformat as the easiest solution to a clean-up and tune-up (computers get a tune-up?!?)

So, I reformat the laptop and now the wireless networking car has stopped working. The card worked previously but now neither of the lights are coming on. When I put it into the laptop Windows XP recognises an "ethernet controller" as being found but cannot find any drivers for it.

So I downloaded the latest drivers for the card including the installation program for it. Neither of those worked.

I came to the conclusion that this must be a driver issue if everything worked fine beforehand. But since I have the latest version of the cards drivers I don't believe the issue is there. Could it be in the PCMCIA cardBus controller? So I checked up on the cardcontroller and everywhere kept telling me its for pre XP windows. Which doesn't make sense as it was just working on an XP system.

My next step before I decided to call you guys was to install Win98 and see if that got the card working. If it did then I would upgrade the win98 to XP instead of doing a fresh install. Any thoughts on that idea? Any other thoughts on what it could be?

Here is the list of details I can give you Any more and I can have them for you no probs. I really need to get this working before I send my wife away to another state for3-6 months without a economical way of contacting her family

Laptop = HP Pavillion ze4400
Wireless card - Belkin F5D7010
PCMCIA CardBus Controller = 02micro oz6912

What am I missing? Any help would be awesome guys, it really would!

[AttaBoy]

Did you install the drivers from this site?? 54g Wireless Notebook Network Card-F5D7010
If not - try it as it is directly from Belkin.

There is a help guide in flash on that site at the top of that page that you might want to give it a try and follow their instructions.

I'm not sure whether installing 98 and later upgrade to xp will work, but there no harm in trying it. Have you tried The HP website - there should be a driver download section for your model laptop.

[Doubleshadow]

It does sound like a driver problem. But the current driver may have a problem with that particular issue of the card. First of all, you should google "troubleshooting" for that particular card. You may also see if there are any hotfixes or any references in the troubleshooting FAQ for that particular card.

Sometimes when you rebuild a computer, the initial software installed may have had dependent or pre-requisite applications that allowed that driver to run properly. For instance some hardware needs a bootstrap routine to initialize on startup.

[SlickHolden]

If it's in a slot try removing it turning the PC on, Then turn it off and stick the car back in..
Now if it's on-board that advice is useless..

I had a dodgy modem PCI slot liek this, When i formatted the HDD it wouldn't reconise the card, So i removed it and fit it to a new slot bingo worked installed drivers and all was good.

[holdensupporter2005]

What is the model number of the notebook that you are working with (HP have 38 different models of the ze4400)
to find out exactly which model turn the notebook upside down. and try and locate a sticker like this.


the model number should be in position (3).

Another thing I am wondering is why you are using a PCMCIA wireless card in this notebook as I believe that the ZE4400 model(s) already has built in wireless.

Try this:

Start --> Control Panel --> System (If your control panel is in Category view the select Performance and Maintenance and then System) ---> Hardware Tab ---> Device Manager.

Once you are in the Device Manager, check and make sure that none of the hardware that is listed has a yellow exclamation mark on them. If they do which one(s) do?

[Not_An_Abba_Fan]

I found with peripherals, when you reformat, the card has to be removed. You reformat, install your OS, then install the card and the drivers for it.

[yobbo88]

Yep format the laptop. Have XP running fully, then install the wireless card drivers, then put the card in. XP has rubbish drivers. do you have the disk that came with the card? If not install those drivers you downloaded. But always have the drivers installed first

[Bax]

If all else fails get yourself a USB wireless adaptor. But the above advice should have it working.