Hello,

Geez, seems like I use this forum for computer help more than truck help!

My wife has a Dell laptop that heaved its nuts. I replaced the hard drive and reloaded Windows XP onto it.

I can not get the wireless to work on it. The computer has it "built into it" and has a light above the screen that blinks when there is a signal.

I have searched and tried to activate it through the labyrinth of BS crap in XP but can not find how to do it.

Can anyone help? The lap top is approx. 5 years old and as best my wife can recall when she bought it the wireless was activated and she was able to go online provided there was a connection available.

Thanks in advance!

 

Did you reload the drivers for the wireless? The drivers should on the restore cd with all the other drivers for the laptop.

 

Ok i do this all the time.

What i do.

I download "PC wizard 2008 or 2009"

install that figure out the model number of the card you have. for both wireless and ethernet.

go to dell website search for your model number and find the network drivers find what pc wizard told you download and install.

 

Does not sound like you have the driver for the wireless i have my own computer bussiness and see this eeveryday with customers, Go to control panel then system, hardware, device manager and see if there are any yellow marks. that will show tht there is a driver missing

 

As other mentioned, you need to load your wireless driver.

If you no longer have your Resource CD, you can go to the link below and enter in your Service Tag (should be located on your laptop). Here you will find the drivers for your specific computer.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/index.aspx

 

Another simple, yet often overlooked, solution would be to go into Computer Management and disable/enable the device.

 

You also need to apply at least SP2 to XP - the Windows wireless before that was pretty much broken. Use a wired connection if you have to in order to get updates and drivers.

 

so i guess i need to hook the computer up directly to the router in order to have internet access to DL the drivers?

thanks for the awesome help, you guys are awesome!

 

Yes, and THAT will only work if the drivers are installed for the wired Ethernet adapter. What you may want to do is use another computer to go to the Dell site and download all drivers, then use a USB flash key to put them on the laptop.

The FIRST driver that needs to be installed is the Intel Chipset Utility (assuming it has an Intel processor) - without that, you will have issues installing the rest of the drivers.