Acer Travelmate 290 problem

I bought an Acer Travelmate 290 laptop second hand but with no driver disks. Device Manager reports an unknown (yellow question mark) Other Device: Network Controller (Location PCI bus 1 device 2). I’m guessing it’s for wireless networking, because I can’t see anything relating to wireless under device manager or Add/Remove programs. The only network adapters present in DM are 1394 Net Adapter & Realtek Family Fast Ethernet NIC. The only other comms related thing is an Agere AC97 Modem. The laptop connects fine to network and internet via Ethernet cable & my BT 3.0 Home Hub.

Specs are XP Professional SP3, 1.5 GHz Pentium M, 752MB RAM. I read that there are various models in the range (290, 290D 290E) & the way to tell is by eyeballing the bar code on the back, but mine is faded away. It can’t be the 290E because that has Celeron. The difference between 290 and 290D seems to be the graphics chip.

The machine seems to come with wireless – I have a switch & when I press it the wireless LED goes orange & a screen message says Wireless Communication Switch On. It has a Fast Infrared wireless port in the manual & visibly there. I can’t see any antenna. I also downloaded hardware detector utility HWVendorDetection.exe from Acer & it finds two things: Lan (Realtek) & Wireless LAN (Intel).

However, Network Connections shows only Internet Gateway, the Realtek LAN and 1394 – no wireless anything. Note that I haven’t set up my home network for wireless yet – I’ve never done that &, as far as I understand, some wireless option should appear in Network Connections even if none are in range (AM I RIGHT ABOUT THIS?).

I went to acer.co.uk/ac/en/GB/content/drivers & downloaded some drivers.

I installed SMSC IrCC Driver 5.1.2462.0 (WinXP) which seems to be for infrared. I got install failed: “most likely because setup does not find the SMSC IrCC hardware”. This SMSC thing, currently still installed, is now in Add/Remove programs but not Device Manager.

I downloaded Intel WLAN 1.6.0.46. This had two folders, App & Driver. I ran the setup in driver. It reported installing, but can’t be seen in Device Manager or Add/Remove Programs. I later tried running the setup in the folder App. I got an error message: Error Applying Transforms. Verify that the specified transform paths are valid.

I installed the Bluetooth driver (Bluetooth is listed in the system spec but as manufacturing optional). It installed, but found no Bluetooth hardware. I have uninstalled this.

I tried to system restore to take all this away but was told on restart the restore was not possible. I had been installing various windows updates so maybe it doesn’t want me to mess with those. I haven’t been installing more drivers since restores failed, even though I note the Acer site suggests a different version of the Intel wireless LAN drivers for models 290 and 290D. The site also suggests different versions of the Realtek LAN driver for 290 & 290D. I have the newer one, already installed.

Any help much appreciated.

 

In Device Manager, right click 'Network Controller' and click properties and then go to Details where you should be able to find the device's hardware IDs.

e.g. PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_0832


Google that and you should be able to find the model. Note that you only need to search the front part of the code (up to DEV and the four numbers).

 

Thank you Namaiki. I have solved the problem by someone giving me the same tip in another forum. Intel's driver worked for their 2200BG adaptor even though Acer's didn't.