Windows 7 Installation Day Notes

I got my hands on Windows 7 at last, fresh off one of the PDC hard drives. I haven’t even used it for a whole day yet, so I can’t tell you much more than what you already know just now. I know there are a lot of things to like about this OS, and as I explore them, I’ll go into more detail over on at Channel 10.

I did, however, experience one driver issue that I think is worth noting. Given that this is a pre-beta developer’s copy of an operating system, I’m sure this will be resolved by the time it goes gold. But for the sake of those googling to find the solution, I figured it’s worth putting this out there in case anyone has the same problem.

Problem

I installed the OS on my Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop as an upgrade from Vista Ultimate. The driver that Windows 7 selected for my network adapter was no good. Internet connections were slow and pages loading would time out. Ping tests revealed dropped packets. The problem was easily solved through a driver update, though – and I didn’t even have to go download a new driver from the internet – a good driver was already available on my computer.

Solution

This laptop has an Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN network adapter. By default, Windows 7 had installed the Intel driver, but it was the one was causing problems. Instead, go into Device Manger, go to the Properties of the adapter, then the Driver tab. Choose “update driver.”  When asked, choose “browse my computer for driver software,” then “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.” The driver I ended up using was the Microsoft driver, version 12.1.0.10. Once that was installed, I was back in action.