Gateway p173x FX Driver Problems Network Controller - REDUX

I would have added this to the original thread, but it was locked. I had the same problem that the original poster did: I had to reinstall my system from a disk that I ordered from Gateway. It was a 64 bit Windows Vista system. Once I did that, the Wi-Fi didn't work. Examination of the Device manager showed that there was one unknown device, called a "Network Controller" and there were no other details.

I installed a number of drivers from the Gateway site, to no avail. I do have a box where I save all of the CDs or DVDs I have used with various systems, and I finally noticed that in that box was a Gateway Recovery Disk that I burned shortly after getting the system.

And on that disk was the needed driver. I installed it using the Gateway Recovery Manager....and it worked. As I installed that driver, device manager refreshed to show that the real name of the device was a Realtek RTL8187S Wireless LAN PCIE Adapter. As far as I can tell, Gateway has never released an updated driver for that adapter, and therefore, it is not available when you look for updates from the web site. It also seems that they have left it off of the recovery disk that you send for. This may mean that if I have to recover from the magic recovery partition, it will lose this device driver again since the install process that built the recovery partition will not have had this device driver.

I was worried that I had a hardware problem coincidental with the disk failure, because how could a company like Gateway build a recovery disk that did not have all the needed drivers? I should have known.

When googling, this was the only site that I found with a description of my problem. I thought I'd post the answer. If I could, I'd post the driver.