Fingerprint reader problem

Hi everyone,

The company I work for recently gave us brand new Vostro 3400's, shipped with no OS, since we were using a corporate CD image.

The box came only with the AC adapter, a FreeDOS installation disk, and a 'Utilities' CD which only contains the Diagnostics utility, no drivers. So I proceeded to Dell.com to get the drivers I needed. The service tags didn't work (tried the one from the box, the one under the laptop, as well as using the online tool to find the service tag) so I just decided to manually select the Vostro 3400 model.

All of the drivers work I've downloaded work, except that I couldn't install the DigitalPersona application for the fingerprint reader. The Validity Sensor driver was installed successfully and it displays a Validity Sensor under Biometric Devices in Windows' Device Manager. Question is, how do I make the fingerprint reader work?

The DigitalPersona driver/installation from Dell's website errors when I try to install it, with the Windows Installer Service saying "The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the Windows Installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing. ....."

Can anyone help?

 

Are these corporate computers supported by your IT staff?

GK

 

I would assume so but I doubt we could get support from them. My group is basically isolated from the rest of the company, we are working inside a university and at the same time are also part-time graduate students. The IT staff, etc. and the main company people are in a different country.

We only had the laptops delivered to our office. The laptops are basically ours now -- the only thing they require from us using the laptops is that we are able to connect to the VPN, which all required software already came with the corporate CD we used for installing Windows.

 

If the device and driver are installed, then you may only need an application to use it. The install error you report suggests that you attempted to patch an application that has not yet been installed. You may need to install the original application first... if you have it. Sometimes you can find these on Dell.com by switching tabs to show ALL downloads for your system.

Someone familiar with your device and how to use it will need to comment. Or, you could go Google for clues.

GK

 

I solved the problem.

Apparently the software to install was EMBASSY Trust Suite. Dell.com's support website is actually lacking quite a lot of information, seeing as each description of the files to download only contain the title of the file I selected.

 

I'm surprised that the Vostro requires ETS for the fingerprint reader...ETS is corporate-grade security software, which the Vostro isn't intended for.