[wm_hunter]

My friend recently purchased an Acer Aspire 3680 notebook computer. The specs can be found on this link.

I knew that the computer would be sluggish running Vista, so I offered to install XP onto his computer for him, and set up a router for his network.

For the network, I had no issues setting up a D-Link and enabling wireless WPA and everything else that was necessary. His "main" computer had wired internet that worked fine.

I was going to format the drive on the notebook and install XP. I had asked him to make a backup of the system32\drivers for me before I came over (I think you can see where this is going)...

When I arrived at his place I found that he had already started formating the drive via the XP installation and was nearly complete. I asked him if he made a backup of the drivers folder, and he told me that he had forgotten.

So, armed with all the information I could obtain from the Acer website and device manager (the latter being practically useless), I was able to find the cards information...

Acer InviLink™ 802.11b/g

It looks like the software for wireless by Acer is SignalUp... I was able to find a site with it, but with nothing of any use on the page... To be honest, I have never previously used wireless and I am not familiar with it (familiar with passkeys and encryption, just not practical use

Windows is unable to detect the network card and unable to therefore create a new LAN\WAN connection. If it was anything else, this would not be much of an issue due to having the internet on the computer to find the drivers, but in this case I am having immense problems.

I am quite good at software, and I cannot believe I didn't make the backup more stressed to my friend...

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, as I will be coming to my friends house and trying to fix the computer tomorrow.

Edited by wm_hunter, 15 August 2007 - 09:55 PM.

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Would these be the drivers for it? Acer Aspire 3680

[cmw2010]

Would these be the drivers for it? Acer Aspire 3680

[wm_hunter]

I will try that page when I get back over to my buddies place. Thank you very much.

If I have difficulties I will repost.... I don't know why I had such difficulty finding that page, but I must have looked for several hours at my buddys house...

[cmw2010]

I had a tough time finding it myself, Acers website seemed to have a lot of broken links.

[wm_hunter]

Just to double check.. are all of these devices fine with Windows XP? And the drivers with XP? I don't want to be telling the hardware wizard to use a driver for a device that was built for Vista (or vice-versa). I know that seems kind of like a dumb question, but this is the first time I have ever actually worked on a Vista system and I am not sure of backwards compatibility on these kinds of things...

Also, will the Acer software also available for download with the drivers work on XP, or are these built specifically for Vista... (I would hope they would not do something as ignorant as this, but after seeing how hard it was to find the drivers, I wouldn't doubt it).

I just want to make sure that I have all my bases covered (so to speak) before I get over there and find out I am having problems...

Thank you very very much to those who have helped me already.

Edited for typos

Edited by wm_hunter, 16 August 2007 - 04:49 PM.

[cmw2010]

As far as I can tell, all the drivers on that link for the 3680 are Windows XP drivers. And really if you are just off of a fresh install, there really is not much harm if they don't wotk correctly. At the worst would be another format and install of Windows. Did your friend happen to make the Restore Cd's before he started formatting?

[wm_hunter]

As far as I can tell, all the drivers on that link for the 3680 are Windows XP drivers. And really if you are just off of a fresh install, there really is not much harm if they don't wotk correctly. At the worst would be another format and install of Windows. Did your friend happen to make the Restore Cd's before he started formatting?

No, he didn't. And like 99% of the companies out there, there was no disc included for restore, or even a vista disc. Nothing but an upgrade guide from Microsoft advertising higher and more expensive versions of Vista.

[wm_hunter]

Went over to his house, installed all of the drivers from a CD I had burnt. Everything worked nice and smoothly, and he is nicely up and running.

Going back over tomorrow to look over his startup\services and fully update windows, double check some router security settings... as for the driver aspect, everything is great = )

Thanks guys, you've always been great and it would have taken me forever to find that obscure page for the drivers...