Windows Vista About to install Vista.

I was doing the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. It said it cant find my nic card.
I have a 3Com 3CSOHO Fast Ethernet Adapter and it say it not supported for vista.
Well I have a Motorola SURFboard® Cable Modem SB5120 and it can be hooked up using a USB cable.

Now will this auto-detect in vista?

 

It does not matter, as no driver is required for a DOCSIS Modem using USB or ethernet in the US. (The driver and whatever information needed is sent by the cable system when the modem connects, and makes no changes on the PC side of things).

 

Sorry this is alittle to technical for me.
in windows xp, i plug in USB it says it needs a driver. So i bought a nic card and use ethernet. I installed a MSDN beta for vista it could not find my internet when i used it in ethernet card. Said no drivers found for nic. I then tried to connect it to the USB and it said cant find driver for modem.

I want to try vista again since i can get a full version for free since I work for dell.

but dont want to waste the time formatting if i have to format again to get into vista..

 

Have you tried installing drivers for your NIC manually? I've installed Vista several times on the computer I'm using now and each time it failed to recognize my NIC. It said something about no driver available too. I went the manual route and it installed fine. There is drivers for my NIC on the Vista disk but for some reason Vista failed to identify it. Mine's a Broadcom adapter, different from yours, but it can't hurt to check it out if you haven't already done so. If you do try this and Vista happens to have drivers for yours, you can expect a warning when you select it to install it. Since Vista doens't recognize it, it'll warn you that it may not be the correct driver, do you want to use it anyway (or something similar) . As long as you're sure you've got the right one, just ignore the warning and install it anyway.

 

how would i know what driver to try??? Still downloading the 3.5gb dvd from MSDN. el90xbc5.sys is the name of the driver on xp.

 

Also i found i had another nic card. dlink dfe-550TX. It could not find the driver for it either. I then went straight from cable modem using USB and then windows vista asked me for a driver for it.

Please can anyone help me?