Installing an old driver that is older than the Roll Back feature

Hello all!

I've been having wireless connection problems since upgrading my Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG driver from the shipped one.

I installed 10.5.1.72 today, but still had connection problems on boot up so rolled back to 10.5.1.69, which is more stable. Then I thought I would try the fully stable shipped driver again, 10.1.0.13, but I can't roll back to it because 10.5.1.72 was installed over 10.5.1.69 (silly me, I should have rolled back first) and every time I try to install 10.1.0.13 it just stays as 10.5.1.69, even if I uninstall it first in Device Manager.

Does anybody know how I can now install the older driver 10.1.0.13?

Thank you in advance!

 

Can anybody help?

One way I thought of doing it was to view the driver details in Device Manager and make a note of the files' locations, then uninstall the device in Device Manager, then go to the relevant locations and delete the driver files.

 

I belive you must delete it from the registry also.

 

Thanks, I hadn't thought of that!

 

I tried all the above, but it still installs 10.5.1.69.

If I uninstall the device, when Windows detects it it installs 10.5.1.69, if I do the above and don't uninstall the device and try to update the driver to the old one it stays as 10.5.1.69 and if I do the above and run the old driver's EXE file it still installs 10.5.1.69.

Please help me!

 

I really want to install the old driver that always connected to the wireless network instead of this one that requires me to repair it the majority of the time.

Any ideas anybody?

 

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Registry... don't know where to tell you to look, but a year or so ago I had a similar hardware related event happen and no matter what I did, un-install, re-install, hardware, the app using the hardware it wouldn't work.

Just a thought

You tried turning OFF system restore? / + going into safe mode?..
Or maybe using system restore to revert back to an earlier time?


A suggestion... you may want to consider purchasing a external hard drive to make "images" of your system. When all else fails, you can restore the system to a previous state that way... Another option is to use Arconis True Image (or the package of your choice) to image the system to dvd, or create a recovery partition on the hd itself of the system when everything is "working".

In this thread a post or two down are links to a good thread /info on external hard drives. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=86901
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I cleared my restore points recently, so that's not an option unfortunately.

There must be a way to install on old driver over a new one.

 

After numerous attempts again tonight and deleting some drivers and system32 DLL files I've finally got it to install the old driver.

Note to self: Do not touch.

 

Things have been stable with both the old driver and the latest one recently, but it still doesn't connect to the wireless network instantly at start up, which is used to.

I was using the other notebook a couple of nights ago and observed that by the time Windows had finished loading the desktop, which only took several seconds, the wireless connection had been made quickly and silently without any system tray notifications or connection animations.

Mine on the other hand tries to do the same thing, but instead of connecting to the wireless network silently I get the no connection system tray icon and a bubble that says:

"Wireless Network Connection is not connected

Wireless network unavailable"

It then takes 30-60 seconds to try to connect. Mine used to connect quickly and silently just like I described the other notebook above.

A clean install is getting ever closer.

 

I think I've finally resolved the connection issue (dare I speak too soon!).

I was going over all the options again last weekend and noticed an option that was enabled which was causing confusion with the preferred wireless network. Under the connection's properties, Wireless Network tab, Advanced box, the "Automatically connect to non-preferred networks box" was checked causing it to detect another network that's close and giving me the option to connect to it instead of connecting to my one preferred network by default.

It's still not as quick to connect when coming out of standby, but is better and so far so good on startup.