Wireless card dissapeared from device manager after Windows 7 installa

Hi there,
I have a Dell latitude e6500 which I have installed Windows 7 professional on (quite a clean install as was a newish machine).
After the install, I had no wireless connectivity so checked in device manager and my wireless card is just not there. It doesn’t have an exclamation mark next to it…it’s just disappeared from the list.
I’ve searched for ages for help on the web to little avail. People are mostly saying to download the necessary drivers. I’ve tried this however I get an error message that says something along the lines of ‘you don’t have the hardware so the driver won’t be installed’
It’s probably worth mentioning that the wireless works fine with my Belkin USB wireless dongle.
Please help, as this is driving me nuts now and I really don’t want to have to uninstall Windows 7 (how do you even do that?! and even if I did, would it make any difference?)
Probably also with mentioning that I am far from an IT expert!

Thank you so much for your help! :)

Sparklybikergirl,

Welcome to SevenForums.

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Sparklybikergir said:

Hi there,
I have a Dell latitude e6500 which I have installed Windows 7 professional on (quite a clean install as was a newish machine).
After the install, I had no wireless connectivity so checked in device manager and my wireless card is just not there. It doesn’t have an exclamation mark next to it…it’s just disappeared from the list.
I’ve searched for ages for help on the web to little avail. People are mostly saying to download the necessary drivers. I’ve tried this however I get an error message that says something along the lines of ‘you don’t have the hardware so the driver won’t be installed’
It’s probably worth mentioning that the wireless works fine with my Belkin USB wireless dongle.
Please help, as this is driving me nuts now and I really don’t want to have to uninstall Windows 7 (how do you even do that?! and even if I did, would it make any difference?)
Probably also with mentioning that I am far from an IT expert!

Thank you so much for your help! :)

Our pleasure what model belkin USB and win 7 64 bit or 32?


Have you looked here? Wireless G USB Network Adapter-F5D7050


Ken J

If the card doesn't show up at all in Device Manager, drivers won't fix it.

It may be disabled in the BIOS, or the card may be loose in the socket. If you are upto it you can unscrew/unsnap the panel on the bottom of the machine and reseat the card, remove the battery to do this.

Another possibility is that the wireless card is simply bad.

If the machine is under warranty, take it to dell.

Using 32bit.

The Belkin wireless G plus MIMO USB network adapter works fine, its just the internal wireless card that doesnt.

Standard spec is:
Wireless LAN:
Dell Wireless 1397 (802.11g)
Dell Wireless 1510 (802.11 a/g/n 2x2)
Intel® WiFi Link 5100 [802.11a/g/n (1x2)]
Intel WiFi Link 5300 [802.11a/g/n (3x3)]

Have tried downloading the drives but it doesnt work as it doesnt see the hardware.

Eveything was fine before the Win7 install so I'm sure there is nothing physically wrong with the card. Could it be that it is just inherently incompatible with Win7?
If so, is it easy to change and how do I know which card to buy if i replace it.

Thanks so much for your help

Bill2 said:

Another possibility is that the wireless card is simply bad.

If the machine is under warranty, take it to dell.

Not under warranty I'm afraid as I got it from a friend

please complete your system specs.

I am having the exact same problem.
I did a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit on my Dell Latitude E6500 and now neither my wifi or bluetooth are working and neither are listed in the device manager.
Pretty sure it is not a hardware problem as the odds would be pretty high that they both quit working the same day I did the clean install.
I have already made sure that they are both turned on in the bios and I even reset the bios back to default as suggested by someone in a different forum.
Switch on the side is in the on position and still nothing.

Any help would be deeply appreciated and thanks in advance for any solutions.