Hello,

To my understanding, if the device driver failed to initialize properly, it should not necessairly consume any resources, such as using an IRQ or memory places.

My guess is that your driver is bad, and/or something upstream is bad, perhaps the PCMCIA drivers, or your chipset. I would remove the device driver, and check to make sure the subsystems are up to date too, and then re-install the network adapter.

Christian

kcOarf,

Thanks for that fast reply. You apparently mistook me for someone more knowledgeable.
Your reply went right over my head. But again, thanks.
This is what we did so far.
Went to the device manager and ran the "Hardware update wizard".
The wizard actually updated the driver and changed the name from, ADMtek AN985 to Netgear FA511.

Restarted and went back to device manager and the adapter still had the yellow exclamation point with the same message as before.

As to your reply, why would the device driver fail to initialize?

Also, could you please explain a little more about something upstream possibly being bad and the chipset.
Thanks a bunch,
John

Hello,

First, I need to disclaim that I have never run XP Home before, and my XP Pro / 2000 Pro ideas might not apply to XP Home.

A device driver would fail to initialize because the driver is calling upon hardware that doesn't exist, or is not configured properly. The device drivers are special pieces of code that expect certain components to be there in order to function.

Think of a computer that operates a traffic light. The computer turns the lights on -- red, yellow, green. The hardware is the lightbulb. The software is the program that turns on the light, and checks for power drain (a lit light draws power to make the shine, and gives off heat). If the lightbulb is missing, you don't have light, and there would not be a power drain. Software says there is a problem. Driver did not initialize properly.

Chipset drivers are a newer thing to motherboards, beyond what we call BIOS. Chipset drivers are used to configure special pieces of hardware and software on the motherboard. The chipset software controls things like the PCI bus, the floppy disk buss, memory management, maybe the parallel port, USB devices. You might need to go to motherboard manufacturer's website and download some software that will help your motherboard out.

What kind of network card do you have? Take a look at it. See if you can find the model number. Go to a website for the manufacture, and download the latest driver. Remove the one Windows thinks it is, and install the one you found that you know works with the card. Again, you might need to get the chipset going properly before the card itself (I have had to do this with some hot-off-the-press dells that we need to use WIndows 2000 with instead of XP. W2K has no idea what the components are in the new state-of-art boxes, and thus I needed to go and get the stuff to make it work).

Your system might have also come with a CD-ROM that has the materials all in one place.

WIthout knowing what you have here in front of me, it is hard for me to "drive" the repair. I hope you can find clues to help you along.

Christian

Christian,

Thanks for the detailed explanation. The network card is a Netgear FA511 for a notebook.

I will do a little more investigating after reading your post and see what I can come up with.

Again, thank you for taking the time to help me.
John

I installed Windows xp so of course I had to reinstall some software such as miscrosoft office. anyway during the windows xp installation I lost the Driver for my D-link Express Ethernetwork DFE-690TXD. now I found the driver online and downloaded it but how in the world do I associate the application so that it will work? HELP!!!

Did the driver not come in a self installer package? You really need the inf file to make the correct settings, reg entries.
Most "drivers" you dl you dclick to extract and run the installer.

gerbil

for some reason it is in a WIN ZIP file but when I click on the WINZIP FIle it wont open.

Do you mean by that that the file extension is .WINZIP ? change the extension to .zip and try it. WINZIP is a commercial compression pgm for zip files. But the driver package should be available from multiple trustworthy sites.

When I did that gerbil it on unloaded 4 files but it doesnt do anything else
maybe im better off just getting a new computer