When I first installed Windows 7 on my PC it was an upgrade. Admitedly it was on a fresh partition, but it was nevertheless on a PC currently running Vista. I was very impressed, as it picked up my wireless adapter automatically. My current adapter is a rather old Philips SNU5600. If it weren't for the fact that it works fine I would have upgraded it for a swanky new model long ago. But there you go.

Anyway, I recently upgraded my main hard disk, which needed a fresh install of Windows 7. This time, there was no existing Vista, and no upgrade. It was a fresh, new installation.

And the adapter didn't work.

There are various stages of grief. I'm not sure if guilt is one of them, but I was certainly feeling guilty. Why had I just killed my adapter for the sake of a potentially faster hard disk? Rage and indignation soon followed, but once I calmed down I thought I would do a google and see what was what with regards to Windows 7 wireless usb adapters. I soon found that there wasn't a lot on offer. Some people recommended Adapter A, others said only B worked. It was all a bit random. So I sat down and looked at the problem once again.

This is the software that worked previously.

Now when I run it, all seems well...

However, it failed when I was told to connect the adapter. It came up with a "Driver not installed" error. I missed a screenshot so you will have to take my word for it. the upshot of it was that it was unable to detect the adapter.

As you can see from the shot above, Windows 7 doesn't think an adapter is connected. Now, it used to be able to see it, so what went wrong? The first thing I thought to try was running the setup as an Administrator. So I went back to the setup program, and right-clicked it. Actually, thats not what I did first. First I reran the setup program so that it uninstalled everything. I thought I might as well begin again from scratch. Having done that, I right-clicked SETUP, expecting to take the RUN AS ADMINSTRATOR option, when I noticed another option.

TROUBLESHOOT COMPATIBILITY sounded very interesting, so I ran that instead. I got the following screen.

Ignoring the TRY RECOMMENDED SETTINGS OPTION, I opted for TROUBLESHOOT PROGRAM.

On the next screen, I took the first option. It had indeed worked in earlier versions of Windows.

Next, I specified the exact version it had worked with. I wouldn't sweat it if you can't remember the exact service pack you were on. I would just take the most up to date one that applied to your OS. In my case it was Vista SP2.

I then clicked the handy "START THE PROGRAM" button.

Setup then proceeded as before until...

Blow me! It works! My driver has now been detected!

As you can see below, the wireless software now runs properly!

However, you are not quite done yet. Go back to the troubleshooter (current screen had teh "START THE PROGRAM" button on it) and click NEXT. Then, assuming everything is hunky dorey, click SAVE THESE SETTINGS.

There you have it! Close the dialog and send a thankyou to the Windows 7 development team for writing that rarest of beasts, a troubleshooter that actually works.

If you found this useful, please take a moment to view one of the google ads plastered about the page. They pay for the site and each click really does count. Some of the ads are even quite interesting!

Brilliant! I had been busting my balls about that one. Thanks. You\'ve just resurrected an old adapter for me.

Excellent article. You may be interested to know that this troubleshooter works on other things too. I installed The Witcher game on my Windows 7 PC and was plagued by corrupted graphics. I ran the troubleshooter and set it to Vista SP2, and the game works fine now!