Solution: 3COM 3C905-TX drivers for Vista

[Peter Puuppo]

In the afternoon (7 hrs ago) I installed my first Vista Business
OEM-version. I was surprized that Vista did not find any suitable
drivers for my 3COM 3C905-TX network adapter. Even if this is not a
brand new network adapter model it was some years back the most popular
of the 3COM 10/100 adapters.

Time to start Googling to get this sluggishly slow Vista up and
networked. Uhh, this Vista is a real crawler, even on an Athlon 3500 CPU
with 1 GB of RAM.

I soon found serveral others looking 3COM Vista drivers also. Someone
told that 3C905 drivers are there on the Vista installation-DVD, and
they should get automatically installed. I tried this and made Vista
search drivers again from the DVD, but again it did not find anything.
Some other suggested that Driver Guide site has new and suitable Vista
driver for 3C905. I again found nothing Vista related from there.

The solution for this Vista problem simple once you find it. Just go and
download this 5 year old driver from 3COM site here:
http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/result.jsp?selected=5&sort=effdt&sku=3C905B-TX&order=desc

"3c90x1.exe" "07 Nov 2002" "Size: 0.89 MB"

Run the EXE that appears to be a DOS-style self extracting file and
extract it to some temporary folder. Now make Vista to look 3C905 driver
from that folder, and Vista finds a driver and installs it. After that
you can go and check the driver version and it looks like this:
"File version: 4.31.0000 Copyright 1994-2002, 3Com Corporation."

Vista is now completely happy with this driver and you can get to the
internet.

But once you now got to the web you can make Vista to look even newer
driver, it even seems to find something and installs this kind of driver
"File version: 4.41.0000 Copyright 1994-2002, 3Com Corporation."

There is only very small, or none, difference between those driver
versions and both seem to run fine on Vista.

So this was only for 3C905 adapter, now there is only 10.000 other open
Vista driver problems to be solved. Hopefully someone could save 7 hours
of his/hers work time with this tip
p.p.

 

[Malke]

Just used this same solution on the Windows 7 Beta. Worked great!

Unfortunately, no one knows to whom you are giving this information since
you are not posting on a real forum as you think you are and you didn't
quote any of the thread to which you are replying. You are using a web
interface that leeches Usenet posts and most of the rest of us are using
real newsreaders. We don't see what you do. If you want to participate in
Usenet, the better way is to set up a newsreader. This is very easy to do
and I'll give you information about that below. If you prefer to use a
forum, then here are two excellent ones:

http://forum.aumha.org/index.php
http://http://computerhaven.info/

Since you are using a web interface, you may not realize that this is really
a newsgroup. You will get far more out of this resource if you learn to use
a newsreader. There are many good newsreaders for Windows, but you can use
Outlook Express (XP) or Windows Mail (Vista) since you already have it.
Here are some links to information about newsgroups:

About Usenet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ - Usenet FAQs from the Internet FAQ Archives
http://www.usenetmonster.com/infocenter/
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Usenet - a brief explanation
of newsgroups

Outlook Express/Windows Mail as Newsreader:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm
http://rickrogers.org/setupoe.htm
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/accessing_newsgrousp_with-windows_mail.htm

How to Post:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Usenet
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375 - How to Ask a Question
http://users.tpg.com.au/bzyhjr/liszt.htm - How Not to Get Technical Help on
Usenet


http://aumha.org/nntp.htm - list of MS newsgroups
microsoft.public.test.here - MS group to test if your newsreader is working
properly
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/munad.htm - how to munge email address
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossposting - crossposting
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm - multiposting

Other Newsreaders for Windows:
http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php - Forte
http://www.mozilla.org - Thunderbird

Malke