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Please help with laptop drivers!! Impossible to find!?

Last response: in Laptops & Notebooks
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It's an eMachines M2350 laptop. I was upgrading the OS for a friend and they requested that I do a clean install and format the hdd. So I did. Well now I can't find the modem or sound card driver for the life of me! It was a pain just to find the ethernet drivers, but now I've been searching the web all over in vain. The eMachines website drivers don't even run when double clicked!? Customer support was this... "try this driver, here's a link to this driver, wait... how about this one, did that one... no, this one... wait, have you tried this one yet?" NO JOKE!! I used SiSoft Sandra to figure out that it's an Agere Systems AC'97 Modem, but windows won't recognize it at all. Same for the sound, it's recognized as a ALi Audio Accelerator WDM, but no drivers work!? The default driver installs, but then the game port has an exclamation mark on it and there is no sound. By chance does anyone here have the resource cd for it? Or anyone solved this problem before? PLEASE HELP!!

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The drivers linked from this page,

http://www.emachines.com/support/product_support.html?cat=Notebooks&subcat=M-Series&model=M2350

are normal zip files. After unzipping, and I mean actually unzipping, not just browsing around in the zip file with windows, rather extracting them all to a folder, it is a normal, even noobified driver installation with a Setup.exe to run. I ran it, then backed out, because this system needs not that driver (but it seems to work fine as far as I took it).

Also, don't rely on sandra, going on an Agere wild goose chase could take you anywhere.

Burn those drivers to a CDR, but maybe, just maybe they're even on a hidden partition on the hard drive (I have never owned an emachine laptop).
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If only it were that easy... The eMachines website was the first place I went. It downloaded fine, extrated fine, started the install fine... BUT... when it was almost done it gave me this error message...

SEVERE "Driver not found! Reboot and run setup again"

SO.. here I am still soundless...

I cannot thank you enough!! Just the time you spent to type out your reply... THANKS!!! I finally got the modem working!! Now for the sound... none of the drivers worked. Well one got the pc speaker to beep!? But nothing else...

Ok then, now proceed to manual sound driver installation mode. (I assume you did install the board chipset driver already, right?).

unzip that sound driver from the emachines' site.
In it, in the relative path:

\Smaxwdm\W2k_xp\

THAT is where the driver files are. Go into Device Manager and on your unidentified or otherwise non-working sound card, in it's properties choose to update the driver and then browse to the above folder (wherever you unzipped it to), where it should pick up on the smwdmali.inf file.

Ok, this is crazy! I had to uninstall, then let NOT let windows automatically install the device by choosing the driver location... then it still didn't work, BUT then I could run the setup.exe for the soundmax driver, then reboot and IT WORKES!! I don't know why or how, but that's how I got it to work... AND not only that... it was a generic soundmax driver from some driver website, emachine's driver wouldn't work no matter what!? THANKS for your help... NEVER BUY AN EMACHINE!!!

All the manufacturers do this, really, so it's not just Emachine's fault.

Honestly, I haven't had many issues with Emachines... once you identify the hardware (I look on the chips themseleves) it's easy enough to use driverguide.com to get the right ones. It may take a few tries, but it's not that bad.
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