Gather information about your hardware

To best troubleshoot your wireless connection you will need some items and some information. Although you might not have all of these items, collect what you can:

  • Your laptop and wireless router (of course!)

  • The packaging and contents for your device (particularly the user guide for your router)

  • A driver disc - even if it only contains Windows drivers

  • If possible, have access to an alternate working internet connection for downloading software and drivers

It is also helpful to have the following information available. Again, just collect what you can:

  • The name of the manufacturer for your computer, wireless adapter and router

  • The complete model number of your computer and router

  • Any version numbers that may be printed on your devices or their packaging. These can be especially helpful, so look carefully.

  • Anything on the driver disc that identifies either the device itself or the components it uses. Wireless implementation chips are often operated by firmware, a type of software written specifically for that chip.

Once you have these items and this information, click Next in the upper-right portion of this page to continue.