Wifi refuses to connect after h/w upgrade

I recently decided - for technical reasons that are not important here - to change the mobo on one machine but this meant that the o/s's were presented with a new chiptset and graphics. Basically SIS to AMD/ATI.

Expected everything to balk but to my amazement, Win7 fired up and all seemed well - except for Wifi (TPLink WN350GD pci card) which, whilst recognised refuses to see the world. Paradoxically, WinXP (on same multiboot machine) needed much nursing but had maintained the n/w connection and is now all good!

The problem is how to re-establish the wifi in Win7? I can't remember whether, in the original install it recogised the card or I had to install the proprietary drivers. Either way, if the Win drivers are removed and then reboot it is reinstalled, yet if I remove then install TPLink driver (or vice-versa) and reboot, the Win version still reappears and no connection can be seen (red cross on system tray icon)!

Please help.

[BTW MX-Linux booted up without a glitch and active Wifi whilst PCLos ground to a halt after grub menu ]

Welcome to the forum. You dontsay what version of 7 you have 32 bit or 64 bit. I wonder if you have a 64 bit and the other systems are 32 bit the drivers and FAQ are here Download for TL-WN350GD | TP-Link


It not clear if they do a 64 bit driver which could be the problem. The card is so old and so slow sooner than mess go and get a new one that is n or ac type as this will double your speed yours is old slow g type

You may be missing a motherboard pre-requisite driver. When switching motherboards its always good to download and install every final driver that the motherboard manufacturer has on their website, just in case

To test your suggestion about the chipset drivers so went through the excrutiating process of using WinToUsb to create a bootable Win7 usb (at least 4 attempts of an hour each) which, when presented to the target machine, took a further 9 hours to custom "install" itself to the usb and boot - ugghh! (a livelinux takes 30min to create and 2min to boot).

Anyway, the purpose of the exercise was to test the chipset + win tp-link driver combination which worked fine ootb.

What, I believe, is needed is a sequence of steps to purge Win of ALL - ie Win and TPLink - n/w card drivers so that Win is presented with a clean situation at the next boot. What seems to get in the way is that TPLink don't fully uninstall and still clash with Win drivers- though, I only installed the TPLink drivers because the Win "Atheros" driver fails.

Here are my thoughts in order of priority
1) Download and install all motherboard drivers from the motherboard site other than the ones you obviously do not need, from post #3. This cannot hurt, and might help.
2) do start > run > cmd > msinfo32 > components > problem devices. This will show the drivers that are not working properly. There may be a couple you have not installed or need to re-install
3) If you are having trouble removing drivers, here's how.
- use start > run > appwiz.cpl to remove any programs that look like they may possibly have installed drivers
- use safe mode to uninstall driver from device manager.
- do a forced removal from the command line: find the device in control panel, then right-click and select Properties, then Details, then find its INF Name in the drop-down list. Then from a command window opened with Admin privileges do start > run > cmd > pnputil.exe -f -d INFName.inf.
- Use Device Cleanup Tool (below) to remove any and all drivers from NON-PRESENT devices.
Tools for Windows

Thanks for the comprehensive reply johnhoh.

1) I actually downloaded a set of drivers before buying the mobo. The only ones I could find were for Gateway but am not convinced they're correct as there seem to be anomalies. And I'm surprised that XP coped without them except for graphics which were downloaded from another source.

2 and 3 will need more time but that's a useful link.

I'll report back later.

In the meantime I'd already clocked that device manager > rt click > properties reports that the device is working properly yet no activity lights from the device!

Ok, done (2) but nothing is listed under Problem Devices.

This got me wondering whether Win7 was not seeing pci cards so put in DVB-S card which was seen (though not installed) but did show in Problem Devices. (I can't remember whether it had been set up prior to these difficulties).

Yet Win7 insists on installing the Atheros driver, device manager insisting that it is working properly whilst everywhere else reports problems or non-existence! It even appears in network connections as does the ethernet (ie cable) - which does work.

I'd already checked appwiz (several times) but nothing there that shouldn't be.

I haven't done the last step yet but DeviceCleanup reports 126 non-present devices! Most are described as last used 4471 days ago (which is about the age of Win7 isn't it?) but those allegedly used much more recently is more curious.

Anyway, I've wasted too much time and am at the point of biting the bullet and doing what I was trying to avoid - reinstall Win7, with the additional time in adding all my usual apps and hope the process doesn't balk everything else.