e1505 help needed

My hard drive failed, installed a new unit, installed windows xp and drivers
off the recovery cds. Everything seems to work except my wireless. I cannot get the wireless to come on. It loaded a intel pro wireless driver . I have tried reloading xp and drivers multiple times.. no luck. It connects to the internet via ethernet cable .. my other lap top works ok on wireless , so I know its this lap top. I need some help ... originally it had 2 wireless systems one by intel and the other was running thru windows. I cannot get either one to turn on the wireless. I dont know if it is driver problem , windows operating problem or hardware problem. I am so spun around at this point.. i have tried just about everything i could think off . Might be easier to startover and reload windows xp and speciific drivers.. can somebody give me some insight. I called dell they were useless , my contract had expired on this machine. Doesnt matter that I just bought 2 new units!!!! times have changed.

 

Did you enable wireless?

Are you sure the wireless card is still functional? Do you see it in device manager?

 

I cannot get the wireless to enable.. the icons are in the task bar .. but I cannot inable , disable , turn on or off it looks like its there but is in ghost mode. At this point I am not sure if it is in the device mangager .. can you tell me what I am looking for.

 

Under Network Adapters there should be 1 for Ethernet and 1 for your WLAN card. Does the WLAN card show up or is it a yellow question mark?

 

Thanks for your input .. I got it up and running last night. I formatted my new hard drive... reloaded windows xp from the recovery cd.. went on dells service and support site and put in the service tag. Got the list of all the drivers.. copied and loaded them on , extracted the files and installed all the drivers. And wow it actually came back to life. The cd with the drivers that dells sends is a crock ... I dont know why they even bother sending it. Of course nobody at dell could tell me to do this.. I actually found the idea on this forum. Probably have 100 hrs in this laptop trying to get it up and running. Thanks again .. I hope this helps somebody else .

 

Well I was trying to help you without reformatting, but seems like you solved your issue.

Dell drivers discs aren't always useful, if you can't decipher Dev/Vend ID's. Best would be go to support.dell.com and punch in the service tag.