M17x R3- can't get wireless adapter/driver working after reinstalling Windows 7

I've had my R3 for years. The other day I stupidly took out the CMOS battery to try to fix a small issue and when I put it back in I ran into loads of issues that eventually led to me corrupting my Windows. After backing up my data, I had to do a fresh reinstallation of Windows 7 on my laptop.

Now I'm trying to get my drivers in place and things are going wrong. Apparently the "Resource DVD" that was shipped with mine and many others is the wrong one and I can't use it to get any drivers so I'm having to download drivers online on another pc and transfer them over to my R3 via USB.

I have entered my service tag on Dell's support site and downloaded all the drivers that are listed for my service tag, but I still cannot get my wireless adapter to show up.

I have the Dell 1501 Wireless Half-Mini Card by Broadcom.

Downloading and extracting the driver file for this does nothing. It doesn't trigger an installation setup. I have read that I should go to device manager and manually redirect it, but when I go to device manager, the wireless card does not show up under my network adapter section.
I found a forum post with a picture from someone with the exact same problem that was never answered from 2 years ago:

https://twitter.com/Peter_Mansour_/status/300823482009255936/photo/1

That picture is exactly how my device manager looks, with all the exclamation points and unknown devices. I also can't get my Nvidia drivers to install because they say I need to install an Intel driver first.....

I have no idea what to do.

 

It sounds like you are not running the install of the driver? When you first run the download it extracts all the files to a folder that comes up on screen. You then need to navigate to that folder and run the setup program in there, they do not autostart.

Probably the same problem with the other devices?

Good luck.

 

http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk...ienware-m17x-r3&languageCode=EN&categoryId=NI

This is a driver for R3, you will need to click run as administrator (if you run it in the usual way on Windows 7, setup does not start automatically). If it still does not start, you will need to navigate to C:\dell\drivers\R289411, find setup.exe and run it.

Edit: it looks MickyD1234 beat me to it.

 

I'm pretty sure that Driver with the Yellow exclamation mark is the Driver that's not showing up for the Broadcom card.
Either way, I could not have said it better than MickyD1234.

 

I guess I wasn't clear in my original post. There is no setup file to run in that folder from what I can tell. I can click on every file in the driver folder (R289411) and nothing happens. The only file in that folder that brings up anything is "bcmwl6.inf" and that's just a notepad document.

Also, before you tell me I need to go to device manager, right click on the device I'm trying to install, and click "update driver" and direct Windows to that driver folder....that's what i've already done and it doesn't work because I can't see the Wireless network adapter in my list of devices. I have tried right clicking all of the unknown devices with exclamation points next to them and none of them work when I try to redirect Windows to the driver folder.

 

That is very strange. Right click on the inf file and select install maybe?

Can you post a screen shot of that directory?
I'm wondering if there are two downloads. One with the install and one that is just the driver files?

Did you try to add a new device and point at the driver folder?

What about the intel display drivers? Have you found the install or setup.exe in another folder under drivers?

 

I just looked and indeed no executable but the instructions say:


1.Double-click the new icon on the desktop labeled Dell_Wireless-WLAN-1501-Half_A00_R289411.exe.
2.The Self-Extracting window appears and prompts you to extract or
unzip to C:\DELL\DRIVERS\R289411. Write down this path so the executable (I.e.
Setup.exe) file can be found later.
3.The Self-Extractor window appears.
4.Click OK.
5.After completing the file extraction, if the Self-Extractor
window is still open, close it.
6.Click the Start button and then click Run.
7.Type C:\DELL\DRIVERS\R289411 in the Open textbox and then click OK.
8.Follow the on-screen installation instructions.

Interesting, seems windows will sort it out.

EDIT: Well that didn't work it just opened the folder. Try that right click I mentioned or add a new device in DM.

 

When I right click click the inf file and click install it says "The INF file you selected does not support this method of installation".

How do I add a new device?

 

Try this driver instead:
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=NMGJH

The official driver does not indeed have an executable file when extracted, which is very odd. The only other driver I have seen in Dells like this is AHCI driver, the rest of them have executable setup files.

 

Okay so it randomly worked one time when I, out of frustration, kept trying to right click Network Controller in the Device Manager and clicking 'update driver software" and redirecting it to the driver folder. I had done this many times before and it makes absolutely no sense why it worked this time, but it did and it installed the driver for my wireless card.

I can now connect to the internet, albeit slowly because I still feel that there is something wrong with my wireless card's hardware (the internet connection speed is fine on every other device and laptop in the house).

My new problem is trying to install the driver for my NVIDIA GTX 460M card. Whenever I try to install it it says
"Install cannot continue. You must install an Intel driver first"

According to Dell support there are no other drivers that I need to be installing though at this point...

 

I'll have a look, maybe it's not showing as the integrated card in your list.

Right click on the top of the device tree and select add legacy device, That might work.

BRB

Intel driver: http://downloads.dell.com/video/INTEL_--HD-GRAPHICS-3000_A02_R303343.exe
NV driver: http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER00946350M/2/Gfx_NV_P11_306.97_1FWD3_setup_ZPE.exe

Edit: The link above from @ mariussx seems to work correctly.

 

Thank you to everyone. I really appreciate the help. It seems that The drivers have been installed. I may post back here if I run into more issues.

I'm also thinking about getting a new laptop sometime soon anyways. Thinking about an Asus laptop in the $1,500 range.

 

Oh, actually, I just realized. In my device manager I still have exclamation points next to the
"PCI device"
"Universal Serial Bus Controller"
and two unknown devices.

Any ideas what drivers these might be or why it's like this?

 

One will be the Accelerometer. It's used to park HDD if you drop it.

http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER95261M/2/R289409.exe

USB3 driver:
http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER95252M/2/R289408.exe


All from here: http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukdhs1/product-support/product/alienware-m17x-r3/drivers

There are two bios files, the later one disables SATA3 as they had too many problems with it. The A08 was the last one that supported it.

Only use the updated nvidia driver not the one listed for your card, it's too old. You might want to check out a later driver from the NV site once you have it all working.