How to tell what wireless adapter in Aspire 3680?

I performed a clean install of Windows Vista Home Basic on an Aspire 3680-2419 & I see 5, yes FIVE different wireless drivers on Acer's site for this model laptop.

How do I tell which wireless adapter is installed?

The options are;

• Wireless LAN_Atheros_7.1.0.90_VistaX86
• Wireless LAN_Broadcom_4.102.15.56_VistaX86
• Wireless LAN_Intel(3945abg)_10.6.0.29_VistaX86
• Wireless LAN_Intel(4965abgn)_11.0.0.74_VistaX86
• Wireless LAN_QMI_4.102.15.61_VistaX86

Thanks!

~Dave

 

Have you checked in device manager?
If Windows doesn't recognize it you may still check it manually using device ID but I think it would be easier to install HWInfo32 and check there.

 

Device manager just shows it as an unknown Ethernet adapter, since there's no driver installed. I'll try HWInfo32.

 

Thank you VERY much for this recommendation! I've been in the computer support business for many years & was unaware of this useful utility until now.

HWInfo32 identified the wireless network adapter as an Atheros, so I installed the driver. For some reason the laptop would not initially connect to my Linksys router on which I have WPA2 configured. It kept saying I had entered the wrong password, when I knew it was correct & could connect with another laptop wirelessly using the same password. Then this morning I tried again & it connected... I have no idea what that's about, but it works now.

Thanks for your help.

~Dave

 

No problem. You may want to update this driver though- what you have is 7.1 (Win Update will offer you 8.0) but current version is 9.2.
See here for download.

 

I downloaded & updated the driver from the link you provided.

Thank you for the help!

~Dave