Catch 22: Missing Acer Network Drivers

A client recently purchased a second hand computer which had been wiped by the previous owner, an Acer Aspire desktop. The way it was wiped effectively just left a version of Windows 7 that was 'unusable' I think the person who did the wipe just reinstalled Win7 leaving us unable to login or do anything really.

I obtained Win 7 Home Prem and reinstalled Windows myself today, however the major Acer drivers are missing, including the network driver. Which means I cannot connect to the network/internet.

I went to Acers website and downloaded a utility (on another computer and transferred it to a USB drive) however when running it, it requires a network connection to download the driver. Catch 22!

I'm at a loss as what to do next. I cannot find a standalone network driver for the Acer Aspire.

I'm considering getting a Wireless USB stick, the client has a wireless network, so that I can connect that way, however I'm not sure if the wireless sticks use the internal network drivers at all. Is this feasible, do you think?

That's all I can think of doing at the moment.

Any other advice would be most appreciated. Thanks.

Edit:

See this webpage for how the DriverUpdate works http://www.official-drivers.com/installer/?seed=acer&gclid=CObPotTXgbwCFUTipAod618A0Q It is designed to connect to the web when scanning to download the drivers.

John Judd

Posted 2014-01-16T03:29:14.770

Reputation: 139

What exact model is your desktop? – cutrightjm – 2014-01-16T03:53:39.803

Ummm, offical-drivers.com is not a official site to download drivers for any manufacture. Did you try http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers?

– Scott Chamberlain – 2014-01-16T03:54:32.057

@John, just look up the model on the Acer site. – Synetech – 2014-01-16T04:00:08.040

Answers

This problem is trivially easy to solve:

Option 1

Use wired networking temporarily. Windows includes many generic wired network drivers, meaning the wired NIC in the machine may already be usable.

Option 2

Use a USB wireless adapter temporarily. If Windows doesn't automatically recognize it, install the drivers from the disc that came with the stick. You can then download the rest of the drivers through Acer's utility.

Option 3

Try searching the Acer web site again. They are very good about having the drivers for their hardware available for direct download, provided the hardware isn't ancient. I think it quite likely you simply missed it the first time around. (Or at least they were very good about it a few months ago, the last time I had to look.)

Michael Hampton

Posted 2014-01-16T03:29:14.770

Reputation: 11 744

Thanks for all your help. I didn't realise the official drivers site wasn't actually Acer. However, I found the network drivers for the computer on Acers site and did the USB swap and it's now (almost) all working. – John Judd – 2014-01-16T04:31:00.453

The official website for drivers is at http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers. The www.offical-drivers.com website you linked to that you said you download the driver tool from has no affiliation with Acer and it is very possible that it could be a malicious site trying to install adware or worse on your computer.

The official website has very clear indications of what drivers are for what and you should have no problem finding the drivers for your model.

Scott Chamberlain

Posted 2014-01-16T03:29:14.770

Reputation: 28 923

+1 Seriously, any website trying to instill credibility with a generic name like "Official Drivers" is obviously unofficial and likely malware. @JohnJudd You should consider running a good anti-malware scan against both computers that were exposed to that website; or better yet, reinstall... – Chris S – 2014-01-16T04:35:49.800

The application from the Acer site is almost certainly downloading the actual drivers to %TEMP%. Sort by date and copy them to removable media.

MDMarra

Posted 2014-01-16T03:29:14.770

Reputation: 19 580

Yes, but it cannot connect to the internet to download to the temp folder. When I scan it comes up with an error message telling me to connect. The computer I downloaded the update driver program to, is not an Acer. – John Judd – 2014-01-16T03:40:56.930

...download it on a different computer. – MDMarra – 2014-01-16T03:48:00.757

Run it on the other system, then copy the downloaded files from the temp directory to the USB stick. – Synetech – 2014-01-16T03:50:01.423

1This won't work as most auto-install programs cover a variety of computers, it's justa generic program that detects what model it's running on. – cutrightjm – 2014-01-16T03:58:19.247

Thanks. Got it working. BTW, that download program once I got the network driver working wanted to charge to do the other driver updates! – John Judd – 2014-01-16T04:32:15.473

Yeah, he's not actually trying to download from Acer. See his update on the crapware ridden site he's trying to use. – Chris S – 2014-01-16T04:33:16.493

I see you've found other solutions, but a few more thoughts for any future readers who might still be looking for workarounds...

One last-ditch fallback solution is to contact the manufacturer and ask them for the original install media for that model. Typically they'll charge you a small nuisance fee for that (last time I needed one I think they wanted $30 for the CD, shipping included), but it can be used to completely wipe the drive and reinstall the OS and their original drivers from scratch. Of course your first step after doing that should be to install all the OS and driver fixes which have been released since that disk was last updated.

Another solution, depending on your needs, may be to punt Windows and install Linux. (I'm 99.95% Linux at work right now. My personal machine has some Windows apps I'm not ready to relinquish, so I'm planning on having it run a Linux VM under Windows.)

keshlam

Posted 2014-01-16T03:29:14.770

Reputation: 143