Driver requirement identifier?

Gilly · 10 Apr 2011 at 21:34

Hopefully a quick and easy one. Our lass has inherited a tower that's surprisingly high spec (for a free machine) but it has a wireless network card in it that doesn't have any accompanying documentation or identifying information on it.

Is there anything I can install that will be able to find out? Standard generic Windows drivers don't appear to want anything to do with it :/

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Ta

Pho · 10 Apr 2011 at 21:49

Open up the device manager (start > run > devmgmt.msc), find the wireless card (will probably have a yellow exclamation mark next to it). Double click it and go to the details tab, then change the property to 'Hardware Ids'.

Copy/paste the lines into Google/here and you should hopefully find what it is.

bigdunc · 10 Apr 2011 at 22:05

Have used this numerous times and works really well

http://www.zhangduo.com/udi.html

bledd · 11 Apr 2011 at 11:05

If you run aida64, it will tell you what it is

http://www.aida64.com/downloads/a64xe

Likely to be an Atheros chip

If it's Vista or 7, then you could just download this, extract it to a folder, then point device manager at that folder, with 'search subfolders' ticked

http://driverpacks.net/driverpacks/windows/7/x86/wlan/11.04 32bit
http://driverpacks.net/driverpacks/windows/7/x64/wlan/11.04 64bit

Gilly · 12 Apr 2011 at 08:05

Pho said:
Open up the device manager (start > run > devmgmt.msc), find the wireless card (will probably have a yellow exclamation mark next to it). Double click it and go to the details tab, then change the property to 'Hardware Ids'.

Copy/paste the lines into Google/here and you should hopefully find what it is.

Spot on, cheers

matthab · 12 Apr 2011 at 08:43

http://www.pcidatabase.com/ - put the vendor or device code in there.

LostCorpse · 12 Apr 2011 at 08:45

i use this site quite a lot for unknown devices :
http://www.pcidatabase.com/ you can search by either Hardware Ids or Vender
its usually pretty good for my purposes.
other wise as Pho
although resolved might be usfully in future

Gilly · 14 Apr 2011 at 18:42

OK, detail from the Hardware IDs window:

PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0301&SUBSYS_700E1799&REV_00
PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0301&SUBSYS_700E1799
PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0301&CC_028000
PCI\VEN_1814&DEV_0301&CC_0280

From Unknown Device Identifier:

Chip: Ralink Technology RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
Vendor is blank

bigdunc · 14 Apr 2011 at 19:04

Here you go boss

http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php

Gilly · 14 Apr 2011 at 21:48

Ta, I've got it connected now but it's dropping packets left, right and centre (dropping more packets than are being received by some margin). Weirdly, although it's picking up an IP it still reports that it isn't connected.

[edit]That's with RT256x version 1.2.8.0 installed (running XP)