Broadcom install problem

[monger]

I've got an Acer Aspire with a Broadcom 4311 wireless card, and it was working well, I got good speeds and was able to detect not only my router but others in the neighborhood. So I got the bright idea to try to update my drivers to squeeze as much performance as I could out of it. The install seems to have gone well and DM says the device is working, but now I no longer show available networks and the adapter wont connect. All I did was try to update the drivers from the stock MS ones, yet I'm afraid I corrupted an important file or something. I tried to roll back to the previous driver in the driver cache, but it doesnt work. I've since tried to install other versions of the driver, and all seem to install fine, but the card doesnt respond. I used the SFC to restore missing or corrupt files, but it showed nothing was wrong. Is there some sort of update or bug or other problem with wireless networks in Windows 7 or BCOM incompatibility that I'm unaware of? I shouldve ****ing left well enough alone.
:mad2:

 

[fishnbanjo]

Here is a case where "if it ain't broken, don't fix it, comes to play but in comes in hindsight.
If you have not tried to roll back the driver you can do this in Control Panel>Device manager>Network Adapter then choose the wireless adapter and driver which has an option to roll back driver.

If this is unsuccessful but did roll back you can choose to do a System Restore going back to the morning of the day you did this prior to the upgrade.

If none of this sets you right download CCleaner and Drivesweeper, uninstall your driver and adapter in Control Panel. Run CCleaner and Drivesweeper removing anything to do with the Broadcomm Wireless then shut down and cold boot the PC. The device will be recognized and load MS drivers and you can then upgrade your wireless with the disk that came if those were the ones or retrieve the earlier ones and load them.

 

[WindowsStar]

You can do a system restore back to before you updated the drivers.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/700-system-restore.html?ltr=S

 

[monger]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I did all of that, except using drivesweeper. Historically, on all my Win installs, Ive always disabled Sys Restore because Ive never had a need for it. I guess theres a first time for everything. Ive been using Win since 3.1 and have never had a problem like this, where for all intents and purposes the install goes well and the OS says the device is working but theres no response. Except for a modem here and there. Its weird, the modems always seemed to give me shit. Its very odd, as if installing the other driver the first time either killed the wireless card or messed up somethin in the OS and then ruined it for all the other driver installs. The wireless worked perfectly, and then, a coupla minutes later, kaput! At the same time I did an update for the sound chip, and that went swimmingly! Ill see if using drivesweeper helps any, and I appreciate any and all other suggestions.

 

[fishnbanjo]

monger,
Been around the block myself even before 3.1 but have seen incidences when no matter how diligent we are a driver can become corrupt and when you do an update it suddenly becomes totally unresponsive. Realize that while it may have been corrupt earlier but continued to work we don't know what happened we just know it did happen and now we're dead in the water.

There are times when you have to step back, clean out any and all vestiges of the driver, uninstall the device in Control Panel, have Windows do its magic by finding the device upon reboot and load a fresh driver.

 

[monger]

Just a heads up for the curious.

First of all, thanks for all of you who took the time to post a reply. Second, I found the answer to my prob, but not really a solution.

Apparently, the SOBs at Microsoft have taken it upon themselves to provide a driver for this card that cant be ****ing upgraded! You try to upgrade to a driver other than the one Windows installs and it kills the ability for the card to even reconize an incoming signal!

I knew that there was nothing wrong with the card itself, but I was afraid that I would hafta do a complete reinstall in order to get my wireless card working again. The ONLY way I was able to salvage my install was to restore the backup registry files from C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack. I'm not sure why MS hasnt provided a clear cut way to restore these files without having to boot out of Win and manually remove and then restore them, you know, like incorporating it into the recovery console or some such shit! Win7 is the first version that has given me this much trouble with a ****in driver. Is this a Win? No, epic FAIL! The whole thing is suspicious to me!

Anyway, after all that ****ing frustration and runaround, my wireless network is working again. No thanks to M$.

:mad2: