Wireless problem on laptop

I have an Acer Aspire 5633 laptop. It’s 14 months old.

I switched it on the other day and it came up with "Found new hardware" and "Windows needs to install driver software for your Network Controllerâ€. Also my wireless had no connection but I could connect to the internet by cable OK. It was working OK a few days earlier.

To cut a long story short, after many hours of trying to load drivers, I re-installed the Vista OS. The problem persisted.

As I had a copy of XP I installed that. As soon as it restarted and the desktop appeared I got the "Found new hardware…..â€.
I guess it’s a hardware problem.

The spec says I have an Intel (R) PRO / wireless 3945 ABG Network connection but this doesn’t show in Device Manager.

There is a Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller which does show in Device Manager.

I would be grateful for any advice on where I should go from here.

 

Thanks TonyT.
I downloaded both XP and Vista drivers from this site and also the Acer site. They seemed to install but wireless still didn't work.

 

Thanks for the advice TonyT.

As I had the same problem when Vista was on the laptop I don't think that will help.

I think that getting the "Found new hardware...Windows needs to update software for your Network Controller" message on start suggests a hardware problem as I didn't get this message when I initially installed Vista but when I installed it again I got the message.

 

I'll give it a try. Thanks.

 

If your notebooks' wireless adapter is not showing in the device manager (or not even as an unknown device) or in Network Connections then installing drivers is of little use since Windows cannot detect the hardware. When you have reinstalled the OEM version of Windows and all original drivers that came with the notebook and the wireless adapter is still not showing up anywhere you can be pretty sure the problem is hardware related.

Contact the manufacturer to check for any procedure they run in this case and if there is an update for your notebooks' BIOS. If none of that solves anything you are best off getting one of those wireless PC Cards or whatever fits in your model of notebook.

Good luck!

 

Thanks for the advice, Martijn. I'm still struggling with this.
I've had the back off and the WM3945ABG wireless adapter looks really easy to change.
I realise this may not fix it but it's cheap and easy to do.
If that doesn't work I'll get a PC card although I'm not too keen on having the antenna sticking out!

 

I have a spring loaded wifi switch and associated LED. Can't switch it on though.

 

The wireless LED used to come on automatically when I switched the laptop on or I could switch it on/off with the switch.
Now I cannot get the LED to illuminate at all.

 

Thanks TonyT,
I've looked in the BIOS but cannot see any settings for the wifi.