Old laptop driver woes

[james.wired]

I have an eMachines M2350 that I bought back in 2004 or so. After a while of it sitting, I booted it up again to find the OS acting really iffy. So I reinstalled Windows with an XP+SP3 disk. It installed fine but the laptop won't recognize any internet connection.

I downloaded all the drivers for it from here: eMachines Support: Drivers and Downloads

Everything else seems to install just fine, even the sound works. When I plug in an ethernet cord, it doesn't recognize that anything was plugged in. Internet won't work, and I don't get any icon in my system tray that displays anything (like the yellow exclamation mark, or anything of that sort).

The laptop has wireless as well, but it doesn't show up under Network Connections. The only thing that shows up under Network Connections is "1394 Connection" under "Lan or High-Speed Internet". It says it's connected.

The two drivers I am trying to install are the Broadcom drivers for LAN and Conexant drivers for the modem. When I extract the Conexant drivers and run the HXFsetup.exe, nothing happens. The program just doesn't load whatsoever. When I run the Broadcom driver setup, it seems to install just fine, but there is still no available connections or any apparent change in the computer at all.

I've tried downloading the Conexant drivers from other websites and they all act the same.

Can anyone out there help me? Thanks!

 

[MindoverMaster]

Beat it to **** and get a new laptop!

Anyway, did you go directly to the manufacturer of the devices for the drivers?

 

[Hefemeister]

Anything showing in device manager?

Can a linux live cd see the network card?

 

[james.wired]

Beat it to **** and get a new laptop!

Anyway, did you go directly to the manufacturer of the devices for the drivers?

Yeah I went straight to eMachine's site, that same link I posted.

Anything showing in device manager?

Can a linux live cd see the network card?

Under "Network adapters" it shows the 1394 Net Adapter. Then under "Other devices" it has the Broadcom 802.11 Network adapter, Ethernet Controller, and PCI Modem. they are all with the yellow question mark for icons and black exclamation marks.

edit: Just got the Broadcom wireless deal to work through device manager by simply clicking 'reinstall drivers'. I tried the same with the others under Other Devices but no dice, just says can not install because it can not find necessary software for the device. I am now connected to the net wirelessly..but still can't do wired.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Yeah I went straight to eMachine's site, that same link I posted.

I meant to the manufacturer of the wireless/ethernet card, not of the laptop.

 

[Hefemeister]

Does it say the model/chipset of the broadcom ethernet adapter? If so you can grab the driver straight from broadcom.
Broadcom.com - Ethernet NIC Driver Downloads

You may also need to run some old school everest action on it to find out.

 

[james.wired]

I meant to the manufacturer of the wireless/ethernet card, not of the laptop.

Oh woops. No I didn't but I will check though, thanks.

 

[patonb]

Tried windows updates?

Seriously give it a try. Old drivers like to hang out there and install correctly.

 

[james.wired]

Does it say the model/chipset of the broadcom ethernet adapter? If so you can grab the driver straight from broadcom.
Broadcom.com - Ethernet NIC Driver Downloads

You may also need to run some old school everest action on it to find out.

DING DING DING you guys were right. Totally worked. I went to that site and downloaded the oldest driver, just hoping to heck that it would work. Went to device manager, opened up the ethernet adapter, and had it search in that specifc folder for drivers to install. Worked perfectly.

THANKS!

So that's all dandy, but I wanted to double check the audio driver. Sure enough, doesn't work. It's there in device manager as working properly, and on every audio properties I can find nothing is muted and everything points to the proper device to work...but still can't get any sound. It's ALi audio Accelerator WDM driver.

I don't know if that's the right one...but as soon as I uninstalled it from device manager, I got a little popup on the sys tray saying "found new hardware" and it proceeded to re-install itself. Still no sound. The audio driver I downloaded from eMachines website installs, then right at the end it says "Can not find driver. Please reinstall and try again." When I do that it just gives the same error..

 

[Hefemeister]

try this one for sound. Nice to see emachines testing their drivers.
Thank you for downloading SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio from Download.com