I had to re-install Windows 7 Pro on my old laptop as the system became corrupted. Everything went well with the install, however, it no longer connects to the internet. The laptop is hard wired to the Comcast Modem via an Ethernet Cable. Under "network adapters", it shows 2 devices, a Bluetooth (Personal Area Network) and a Bluetooth (RFComm Protocol TDI). It says that both of these are working properly so I don't know where to go from here. Any help will be appreciated.

It isn't detecting your Ethernet adapter. You will have to download a driver from the manufacturer. Can you connect via wireless? That would be the easiest; connect to the manufacturer's support site, download the Ethernet driver for your model, then disable wireless. I assume you've got wireless somewhere. You may have a wireless switch that needs to be turned on.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock

Hi....I am not having any luck with this because everything I try needs to have the laptop connected on line in order to download the driver

You need to download the driver on another system and then copy to an external drive or flash drive. You then connect the external or flash to the laptop to apply.

If I remember correctly from an old discussion this is more of a netbook than a full sized laptop and does not have a CD/DVD drive. If incorrect do you happen to have a driver install CD/DVD that you could use to apply a driver?

This is sort of a catch 22 as, if you could get on-line, Windows Update would likely supply a driver. However, since you cannot get on-line, Windows Updates cannot do its thing...

As Patty suggested did you check to be sure that that either a physical switch or a system setting was enabled to enable the network adaptor? Many laptops and net books have a physical button/switch that turns on/off wireless. Again, if I remember correctly, you do have wireless abilities. The issue here would be that, if the switch for wireless were to be off, Windows would not likely apply possible included drivers as the adaptor would not be seen.

Could you please supply the maker and model number of the system? This would greatly increase out ability to be of help. Without being to do searches on the system we are pretty much throwing darts in the dark.

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Jay, this is not that notepad computer that I was setting up in another post. This is a Lenovo Think Pad Laptop, and it does have a CD Drive. It has Windows 7 Pro installed, 64 bit, 4gb ram, 450gb of usable space. I have downloaded and installed the Ethernet Driver from Lenovo but keep getting messages that there is no network. There are two other Windows 7 PC computers that are connected to the same modem as the laptop and both of those are hard wired to the Comcast modem and do connect to the internet ok. Also, the mini notepad computer mentioned in my other post is connected to the same modem via a wireless connection. The exact error message that I get when I try to install the Ethernet driver is "No Intel Network connections found on this computer. No Drivers were installed".

The message you are encountering when trying to install the driver from Lenovo suggests that you are trying to install the wrong driver for the hardware. When you downloaded the Lenovo driver, were there choices available for your PC model?
-steve

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

You still haven't addressed my question: You are used to connecting this laptop via Ethernet. It likely also has wireless capabilities. That wireless adapter may not have been recognized during install if it were switched off. If you switch it on (if that's the case), windows should immediately recognize it and supply a driver if it has one. Sometimes it is a switch, sometimes it is a function key.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock

On this Lenovo Think pad Laptop, there are no external buttons other than the one to turn it on. The function Key F5+FN is supposed to turn the wireless on or off but nothing happens when I use that key.

There were choices and I thought I chose the right one but will go back and recheck later today and get back to you

You may have to install chipset drivers too. Check for all available downloads, chipset is done first then video, network, sound...

Steve, I had the right downloads for my thinkpad model E520. Devair, I downloaded the chipset drivers. It still cannot find my Comcast Modem, either hard wired or wifi.

Looks like there are several options for the drivers for your wireless network card. If you look on the bottom of the laptop it should say the name of the wireless adapter that is in there.

Make sure you are using the driver under Wireless LAN option.

What model Thinkpad? They usually have a switch in addition the the Function key toggle. The function key toggle requires software from Lenovo.

-steve

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

PHEW !!! I finally got it. I had to download 5 different drivers from Lenovo. I'm fairly sure it started to work after downloading the Bluetooth drivers because as soon as that one finished, the network icon showed up on my lower task bar. Thanks to everyone for your help.

Great news. As my signature tag line says -- "Life's always an adventure with computers!"

-steve

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Glad that it is working.

Still, I would advise that you continue to download drivers and software from the Lenovo site to be sure that everything is driving properly. On the other hand take your time doing this and make sure that you know what each software package happens to be. There will be some that you want and some that will pretty much be crap-ware. For instance, as Steve indicated, you will need to install Lenovo software for your function keys to work properly. If you are not sure what a specific software package is for let us know and we will do the best that we can to clarify.

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Things have been moving along fairly smoothly with this new installation, however, I installed AVG anti virus and ran a scan and there were several threats detected so far. The scan is still running and it is scanning files from C:\Windows.old. In looking at that, it appears to have downloaded all the files from the old system. My question here is, can I delete that entire set of files? One of the files is Windows. old as mentioned above and the other is C:\Windows.old000 and together they total about 27gb of space.

After reading more about this, it appears that windows.old shows up when you upgrade to Windows 10 and it brings along the windows.old files. That is not the case with my Lenovo Lap top as it never had Windows 10 on it. I used a Windows 7 Pro CD, put it in the DVD drive, and booted from the CD. I really didn't even know Windows.old was there until I ran the AVG scan. Having said that, the instructions on how to delete the windows.old files do not work as stated here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... old-folder
I have even looked at some pages that say these files will disappear in 30 days so I am very mixed up on what to do.

I won't deny the issue of getting Windows.old can be difficult to remove. In fact, even with taking ownership of the folder I still could not get rid of all of it. Since what was left after I deleted what I could was not a large drive space I just left it alone and, to be honest, forgot about it.

Since you brought up Windows.old I went ahead and took a peek. It is in fact gone so my guess is that the pages that said it would go away on its own would seem to be correct in relation to Windows 10. Will it go away in Windows 7? I just don't know. Both of my Windows 7 installs were done from scratch so the Windows.old folder never applied.

Now here is where I see a problem with what you did...
You did a new install of Windows 7 due to the previous being infected. Since you DO have a Windows.old folder you did not allow the Windows install to format the drive giving you a 'clean install'. The problem here is that the infection was probably carried over to the new install as is indicated by AVG detecting issues in Windows.old.

As to myself I would never re-install Windows due to an infection without at least formatting the drive. You may want to seriously consider starting over and format the drive during the install. I cannot answer as to if you actually have an issue right now or not. It may well be that the fact that the hits by AVG are in the Windows.old folder may be a plus. It could be that the 'desired' path for the infections are broken by being embedded in the Windows.old folder. Then again it may not.

I would not trust the ifs/or and mayhaps. I would start over allowing the install to format the drive.

Some may disagree on the following but my opinion would be...

I don't know your exact setup but assume/hope that you do have a backup of your data. Make sure that your data backup is secure on another device such as an external drive.

The following assumes that you have a single drive with a single partition.

Re-install Windows using the 'Custom' option. Select advanced drive options (or something like that) when available.

Delete the partition and create a new partition just for Windows and installed programs. This can vary but for my systems I go with around 150GB for the system drive. If you are using a large drive, 1TB or larger, don't be afraid to give the system partition up to 250/300GB of space unless you have a LOT of data such as 500GB or more. All the rest of the drive space is going to be for your data.

OK, setting up the data partition...

While you are already in a basic partition manager while doing the above setup for the system partition you can do it right there. After setting up the system partition you will now have a drive setup with the addition of a lot of what is called unallocated space. You would right click on that unallocated space and select to create a new basic partition. Select to format. You can also skip this step and set up the data partition once Windows is installed via drive management. I just figure why not set it up all at once...

Just continue the install making sure to select the proper partition for Windows.

Copy all your data from the data backup to the partition setup for data. Do it in folders such as documents, pictures, music, etc..

The final step would be to go to each Library in Windows Explorer and then Properties. You would then go to the Location tab and browse to select the location of each category on the data drive/partition.

It sounds complicated but really is not. Myself and others can lead you through each step.

Why separate your system and data drives/partitions?

1) To keep the system drive/partition lean and mean.

2) Redundant backups.
a. I hope that you do system images and your external drive for this is larger than your internal drive.
b. You partition the external according to your internal drive size to allow for a complete system image including both the system and data drives/partitions.
c. You use the rest of the external space for a redundant copy of your data. Windows and installed programs can be replaced, lost data cannot.

I have thrown a lot of info at you and am sure that you may have questions. Make sure that those questions are all answered before doing anything drastic.

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Windows.old exists as a fallback in case you forgot something. You can use it for 30 days to uninstall Windows 10 on an upgrade. I believe that you can remove it using Disk Cleanup. I would wait a little while, and then use Disk Cleanup to remove it.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock

We have to remember that this is a Windows 7 install, not Windows 10. I do not actually know if the same rules apply.

I still think that my advice to do a clean install applies as the initial reason for an install was an infection.

If an infection is severe enough to warrant an install of Windows I would not want to place that install over top of the infected file system.

In my opinion all indications in this thread point to a clean install.

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Yes, you can still use Disk Cleanup to delete the old Windows installations.
You are correct that they are there because Windows was installed without formatting the drive -- apparently twice.

Allyson, go ahead and delete both of those objects manually or use Disk Cleanup from Accessories/System Tools and select the "advanced" options to remove the older Windows instances which were saved by the fresh Windows installs -- you don't need them.
-steve

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

And, while Jay is correct that a clean install, using the option to format the partition(s) would be a good idea, I'm of the opinion that this is not needed. If your infection was contained within the old Windows installation, it should not have carried forward into the new install. The exception would be a MBR infection, but that's not likely what you were dealing with based on the results of your AVG scan.
My opinion -- get rid of those saved old Windows installations using Disk Cleanup and run another full scan with AVG.
-steve

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Jay, clean is always an ideal solution, but not always practical. But you're right, I didn't read the lengthy posts on this thread carefully, just scanned them, so I missed that it was due to infection.

I agree with Steve that removing Windows.old would likely handle the situation; but if another infection is found on scan, then I would wipe the drive and install clean.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock

Oh, I sort of agree that a clean install would probably not be absolutely needed in this situation but I do tend to be a little paranoid about doing an install to an already infected system. LOL! Even in my lengthy dissertation on what I would do I did mention that, since the infection seemed to be contained in Windows.old, it may well be that clean is not really needed even though it is what I would do.

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