A31 needing drivers

[frank_h71]

I had a blue screen come up on my A31 a while back. I took it to the local mom n pop computer shop. I told them the information on it was worth more than the computer. DO NOT FORMAT IT!!!! My wife went to pick it up. I have a fresh newly formatted computer. I tried to restore my backup and they had changed the name of my computer and user name. Backup wouldn't restore. So I get a copy of XP to reformat and change names. Get backup restored. Get my info back.

Here is where I need help. Once I get to this point I can't get online with either Wi-Fi or Ethernet. I do not have any of the original discs that come with my A31 because I bought it second hand 8 years ago. I try the drivers from the Lenovo website. No luck. Take my laptop to geek squad. They work on it for 2 1/2 hours trying all the tricks they know. Still no luck. So I ask Geek. What do I need?

Here is the list:

LAN Driver
WLAN Driver
ACPF Compliant Embedded Controller "chipset driver"

Geek told me the LAN & WLAN drivers might be the correct ones if I can get the chipset driver. I don't know. I have exceeded my knowledge base when I reformatted the A31 myself.

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

Frank

[Saucey]

My A31p suffered a similar state, drivers could not be found for my WiFi or sound.
It was odd because this was just working fine a week prior.
I tried Linux Mint on it, it worked fine with the WiFi and sound.
I didn't try Ethernet, but I figure it will be fine.
It might not be the solution you are looking for, but it worked...

Maybe you have a botch install of XP? I remembered my unit worked fine once I got the driver from lenovo.

[dr_st]

I try the drivers from the Lenovo website. No luck.

Let's try to be more specific.

Did you try the drivers from here?
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/researc ... D=HT072392

Which ones exactly?

What do you mean "no luck"? How did you try installing them? Did it tell you that the driver is wrong? Did it install and it still doesn't work?

What unrecognized devices (with question marks) appear in the device manager?

For each such device, try going to its properties, and in the Details tab, find the Hardware IDs, and post them here. This should help identifying the device.

[jronald]

Installing Lenovo Drivers and getting them to work are 2 different things.

Some of the drivers, you click on and they install theirselves. They just start working.
Others, you click on them and they put themselves in C/Drivers/Win (and other locations). You must then go to add hardware, and tell it to install.

YMMV
Ron

[A31]

Yup I remember when I fresh-installed XP on my A31 it didn't install the ethernet/wireless driver. The ones from Lenovo's page worked for me years ago, should still work now: http://support.lenovo.com/en_GB/researc ... D=HT072392

If I remember correctly, these don't install automatically. You unzip them and then install through the Device Manager (I think - it's been 4 years since I last owned an A31).

[RealBlackStuff]

When you install some of those old(er) drivers they do indeed only unpack themselves into C:\DRIVERS\xxx and similar places.
Write down the the unpack-location during the first install. You can repeat the install if you missed the destination.
Then go to that destination and install from there, usually using SETUP.EXE.