F700 wireless driver

[topgun505]

I have a friend who came home from work and suddenly her system is no longer recognizing the integrated wireless. It's a Compaq Presario F700 laptop. I went to the Compaq support pages and to that model but there are curiously very few drivers on both versions of that model as far as drivers go. Actually there is practically NOTHING on the pages regarding drivers for that unit. A kick Google search turned up nothing as well. She is running Windows XP. Anyone know of another location where I could find those drivers?

 

[Guest]

TONS of ppl are having the same prob with the same exact model no matter what os is running. call hp/compaq and theyll say its not their problem and theyve never heard of it before though ppl have said online that theyve all called and no one could help them at hp. all of the sudden the broadcom wireless wont show under device manager and light turns orange instead of blue. hp tried to blame it on windows vista updates though i know for absolute certain that is not hte case because i have not once updated vista and it is turned off completely.

the only thing that worked at all was i used the hp recovery manager to set back to factory settings. the light turned blue and i could connect. i kept vista updates off and disc from internet to be sure no updates would go through then i restarted the computer a couple of times and same problem happens again: light turns orange, broadcom disappears from device mgr list, etc.

i set back to factory settings again still making sure vista updates are off and this time, i update the broadcom driver and the light goes amber/orange/yellow/whatever and no internet connectivity AGAIN.

I am setting it back to factory settings again to try something else but i dont know what. i think im just going to go buy a usb wireless adapter for $30 to see if that works . this is bu***hit and hp knows it. the guy was a complete jerk on the phone talking to me like i was born yesterday. good grief.

 

[DLipsitz]

Yeah, pretty much the same thing I encountered with tech support. The wireless died a little over a year ago, and tech support denied there was any problem, then blamed Microsofft, Broadcom, etc. Every solution offered online works temporarily at best, if at all.

So, my solution is simple... I no longer purchase any HP or Compaq products, and strongly advise others not to as well. I also no longer support their devices, as this appears to be a case of "planned obsolescence," especially given some of the really high quotes from HP to fix the problem (it's cheaper to just replace the laptop with a better one).

Word has it that Fedora 9 (Linux) will bring the wireless back to life, but I haven't tried it yet. The drivers are NOT written by HP, so it stands to reason this is possible.

 

[buwish]

This topic has been closed by Buwish