wifi help needed

[steveb]

This is a bit of a long first post - sorry in advance. I bought a second hand laptop with xp, it was advertised as wifi enabled. It had software loaded but came without a lan adapter. I ordered from another supplier an adapter which came with a mini disc and I loaded the software, this took the newer version of xp back to a older version of xp, the connection worked OK to my Sky router. I stupidly tried to restore to an earlier time without removing the software and the laptop crashed. My local repairer (at a fifty quid cost) identified the hard drive as failed, the laptop supplier eventually sent me a replacement second hand hard drive. If I load the lan adapter software the xp reverts back to the early version but is unable to connect to the router. If I remove the adapter software the newer version of xp appears back on the screen.

 

My question is this: if I buy a lan adapter and software from say PC World, is it likely to fail? have I damaged the previous adapter when I restored the computer, or have I damaged the computer in some permanent way?

 

The laptop supplier is hopeless and just strings me along with one false promise after another, I don't want to chuck good money after bad.

 

The laptop works fine in every other way and I have had no trouble loading from either the USB port or cd.

[Jamey]

No, it is very unlikely that you have damaged the physical network adapter by installing that driver. Your best bet is to do a clean install of Windows XP and then install a newer driver than the one supplied with the adapter. Post the make and model of the adapter, we will find you the correct driver to use.

[steveb]

Thanks for replying. I have two adapters: the first is the one that came with the dodgy disc that finds old xp, that one is EDUP IEEE02.11G+ 108Mbps

 

The second one is one that the laptop supplier eventually sent me: D-Link 2.4GHz DWL-650. I have found the drivers on their website for this now obsolete piece of kit but I was unable to install them because there was no install program with the driver download and if I don't have an install wizard to guide me through I don't have the knowledge to download the drivers to the laptop. I have tried using a cd and a flash drive (E) to do this but have been unsuccessful.