windows 7 and mn-730 wireless pci card

ok so i got this microsoft wireless card (MN-730) it worked flawlessly on the beta. it found it automatically and everything, i update to the RC and now it doesnt work at all, i install the vista drivers, and it makes it run at 100% and crash, i tried the XP drivers same thing. so now im figuring they ditched total support for this card. is there any wireless card that works?

thanks in advance

CenZ said:

ok so i got this microsoft wireless card (MN-730) it worked flawlessly on the beta. it found it automatically and everything, i update to the RC and now it doesnt work at all, i install the vista drivers, and it makes it run at 100% and crash, i tried the XP drivers same thing. so now im figuring they ditched total support for this card. is there any wireless card that works?

thanks in advance

Click to expand...

HI CenZ, and welcome to Windows Seven Forums! Lets see if wee can help figure this out?

According to this web page: Windows Vista Compatibility Microsoft MN-730 Wireless 802.11g 54Mbps 2.4GHz PCI Adapter

the MN-730 is not Windows Vista or 7 compatible. I am wondering, as you did not specify, whether you have used 32 bit or 64 bit 7?

Others have had success installing drivers in "compatibility mode". Here is a tutorial that might help you get the driver installed.

Hope this has helped?

Robert

I got the card to work on Win 7 (32 bit) using the good old official XP Microsoft Driver downloaded form their site. (Yes the supposedly non-Vista and Win7 compatible one) I just updated to Win 7 on this computer and the MN-730 is the network card I'm using right now.

It takes a bit of a quick hand however to get it installed.

1. Grab the driver from Microsoft.com and get the driver (MSBNDownload.exe):
MSBBN: How to update the firmware and software for your Microsoft Broadband Networking device
2. Run MSBNDownload.exe and choose a place for it to unpack itself
3. While it is running it will eventually tell you that it doesn't support your OS (or something similar) however it will have unpacked a lot of files into the folder you specified
4. Open that folder full of files and find MSBN.MSI
5. Make another new folder elsewhere and open it
6. Run MSBN.msi and tell it to use the folder you just created

** next is the tricky part ***

7. While MSBN.msi is running it will momentarily unpack the actual driver (.inf files etc.) into the folder you created above. When they appear, quickly select all (ctrl + A), copy (ctrl + c) and paste (ctrl-v) them elsewhere. (If you aren't quick enough the program deletes them when it detects that your OS isn't supported)
8. Open device manager, and choose your network adapter (the one that isn't working)
9. Use the old fashioned update driver options and choose 'Have Disk'. Go to your folder of sneakily copied driver files and choose mn720.inf ( I know, not 730, but it works great on the 730 )
10. Viola
:devil:

Oh, I guess the "true" step one is to download MSBNDownload.exe from another computer and move it to the MN-730 computer via USB storage or whatever. However if you are on the internet reading this something tells me you probably already figured that part out.

mike,
thanks for the tip. i'm trying this on my win7 system, but no dice. it tells me that it couldn't find a compatible driver in the folder. any other ideas on how to get this thing to install? right-clicking on mn720.inf and selecting "install" doesn't work either, as it says that the inf doesn't support that method of installing...

thanks for anything more you can offer!

The driver is included with Windows 7, I have 64bit SP1. Install the driver manually and select network adapter, Broadcom, and scoll down you'll see it listed as Microsoft MN-730. I never thought to look under Broadcom till I did some research and found out that it is the chipset used on this wireless network card. Windows will tell you you should not install this driver because it doesn't know if the driver is for your hardware, but it will work.

Click to expand...

I just installed this and it works great in win7!

https://social.technet.microsoft.co...-nonfunctional-in-win-7?forum=w7itprohardware

Now anyway this can work in win10?
Is the win 7 driver somehow savable to try in win 10?

Found out this also works same way in win 10.