Wireless Won't Work on Fresh Installation

Howdy, y'all!

A quick question for anyone who might have had this trouble in the past:

Recently, I had to ship my Inspiron E1505 off to Dell to have them fix something (I can't even remember the original issue anymore). When I got it back, the hard drive failed. After weeks of arguing, they finally sent me a new hard drive.

I've finally gotten XP installed on the machine, and it took a while, but all the drivers and everything are on there and the internet finally works (the computer gave me a run for its money), but the one barrier around which I still cannot work is turning on the wireless.

I work in I.T., so I did go through the "dummy" checks to make sure I was doing everything properly. The wireless is enabled in the BIOS; the "fn" key is allowed to toggle the wireless on/off (says the BIOS); I installed the drivers for the WLAN card from both the XP utility disc from Dell, as well as from support.dell.com, uninstalled, and reinstalled, still nothing. All in all, it seems I have run out of options.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
~Tym

P.S. -- Also, while I'm here, it seems my laptop won't let me go into "standby" mode... The option is just greyed out from the shut down menu and on the power scheme under "when I close the lid..." the only option is "do nothing". Kind of odd...

 

Was the original OS XP when it came with the laptop?

I know for a fact that if you were using Vista and want to install XP you must enable wireless/wifi/bluetooth before you install XP or else the OS wouldn't recognise the hardware despite installing the right drivers for it.

Regarding the missing power options (standby greyed out) you have to install the appropriate Intel chipset drivers.

I think this is the one: (check if its the right one)

Link Here

 

Lordnikon, thank you for taking your time to help. I'll explore that chipset driver when I have some more time. To respond to your post, yes, I used the original XP Media Center Ed. CD that came with the laptop when I purchased it in fall 2006. Also, I believe (to the best of my knowledge) that the wireless was enabled before the fresh install, since it was listed as enabled in the BIOS when I first checked after I installed the new hard drive.

Also, I seem to have found the issue with the standby and power options missing. Since I had just gotten connected to the internet when I posted this thread, I had not yet completely updated my video drivers because I had a different video card than what was on my drivers CD. Therefore, I guess the computer doesn't allow those options when unsupported video drivers are present... It doesn't make much sense that something like standby mode is tied into the graphics drivers... Maybe it's a safe-guard thing.

~Tym