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I have an (Dell) Alienware R4 ALX Desktop PC, purchased with Windows 8, but since updated to Windows 8.1.
On Sunday, in effort to resolve another issue (which I initially wont mentioned here in an effort to not drag out this question), I removed my network cards from Device Manager, without uninstalling the existing drivers.
As expected, Windows found the network cards (1GB Ethernet & 802.11n Wifi) again, identified them, and "hooked on" to the drivers. But, this time for some strange reason, Windows is now allowing me to use these network cards, instead asking me to reinstall the drivers (which are exactly the same as those which were used and worked perfectly fine before).
Trying to fix this, I went on to the Dell website, entered my Alienware Service Tag and redownloaded all the network drivers for my PC (using my Surface Pro) and transfered them to the PC via USB. I then (again) removed the devices, this time uninstalling the existing drivers, ran the installers downloaded from Dell. Again, windows found the network cards, but is refusing to use them and allow me to connect to networks, again asking me to reinstall the drivers.
Can anyone provide any advise as to why Windows would suddenly not like the drivers that worked fine before, and also maybe provide suggestions on how to fix this?
(Note, I hinted above that this all came about as part of other troubleshooting, which I guess could help with the resolution. I'm happy to detail the whole long story, but thought I'd save not do so now. If you need full background, let me know, but be prepared)
Salem874
Posted 2015-04-28T22:03:04.350
Reputation: 113
Did these drivers EVER work on 8.1 or only on win 8? Briefly what caused the other troubleshooting to lead you to needing (or feeling that you needed to ) removal of cards? – linuxdev2013 – 2015-04-28T23:21:38.467
Essentially, my Hyper-V config had problems because the virtualised network switched I'd configured stopped working (for some reason), causing my Virtual Machines to not start up.
To fix this, i figured i'd setup a second virtual switch, but after 1hour+ of Windows 8.1 "configuring", i (stupidly) did a forced restarted.
Following a restart, i had NO network connectivity, not from Ethernet or Wi-Fi.
I tried a few things, but nothing worked. Found online someone had similar issues, and uninstalling network devices (in paragraph 2 above) fixed it
So yes,s this is what how i got myself in this – Salem874 – 2015-05-15T09:27:29.573