need to replace windows driver for wireless adapter

[Gary Roach]

I'm working on a machine in which someone (wasn't me!) installed a D-Link
DWL-G550 wireless adapter without first installing the third party driver.
Vista installed a generic "Atheros Wireless Network Adapter" driver. There's
no error messages and the device appears in the device manager but it
doesn't detect any wireless networks even though other machines do. I want
to install the correct driver and I've run the driver software to install it
but the old driver remains. When I right-click on the device in device
manager and choose "update driver software" and point it to the new driver
it doesn't load it. I can tell this by the date of the driver and the fact
that the name remains "Atheros Wireless Network Adapter". I tried
uninstalling the driver but it just picks it back up and installs it again.
I tried physically removing the device and then booting up and shutting down
and reinstalling it and letting Windows pick it up again but the same driver
gets loaded. I can't do a system restore because the device was installed
several months ago and the restore points don't go back that far. What do I
do? Thanks.

 

[SG]

Hi Gary,

Hmmm well this seems like a tough one and appears you have done everything
correctly. I think I'd try removing it again through Device Manager and also
check Add/Remove to be sure nothing is listed there. Shut the machine down
and remove the card as you did before and restart. Again shut down the
machine, but this time see if you can install in a different PCI slot and
boot the machine. If this don't work then you need to find the *.inf file
that windows is picking up for the Atheros Wireless Network Adapter and
remove it. Not sure on Vista as it's not on the machine I'm now using, but
all others are in the Windows\INF folder. I search the Net and appears the
name of the file is atheros.inf.

 

[Barb Bowman]

Many of the DLink wireless NICs use the generic Atheros driver under
windows because the NICs have the Atheros chips. You do know that
under Vista you should not use the DLink utility and should be using
Windows native features to manage the wireless. When you say can't
detect - do you mean with Windows or the DLink utility?

I'm working on a machine in which someone (wasn't me!) installed a D-Link
DWL-G550 wireless adapter without first installing the third party driver.
Vista installed a generic "Atheros Wireless Network Adapter" driver. There's
no error messages and the device appears in the device manager but it
doesn't detect any wireless networks even though other machines do. I want
to install the correct driver and I've run the driver software to install it
but the old driver remains. When I right-click on the device in device
manager and choose "update driver software" and point it to the new driver
it doesn't load it. I can tell this by the date of the driver and the fact
that the name remains "Atheros Wireless Network Adapter". I tried
uninstalling the driver but it just picks it back up and installs it again.
I tried physically removing the device and then booting up and shutting down
and reinstalling it and letting Windows pick it up again but the same driver
gets loaded. I can't do a system restore because the device was installed
several months ago and the restore points don't go back that far. What do I
do? Thanks.

--

Barb Bowman
MS Windows-MVP
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/meetexperts/bowman.mspx
http://blogs.digitalmediaphile.com/barb/