[SOLVED] Is there a wifi adaptor driver for a Windows 7 laptop with Windows 10 installed

[martykinn]

I have an ancient HP Pavillion G7 laptop that had Windows 7 Home Premium. I bought and installed Windows 10 Home, but the wifi keeps cutting out. I updated the wifi driver through Device Manager, but the wifi adapter wouldn't work at all with this new driver installed, so I rolled back the driver.

The wifi adapter is: Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter

Driver version: 6.30.223.256

I searched for drivers but none would install.

 

[popatim]

We'd need to know which Broadcom chip the adapter is using to steer you to the right driver.

 

[martykinn]

We'd need to know which Broadcom chip the adapter is using to steer you to the right driver.

Okay, I see nothing regarding the chip in Device Manager or adapter properties. Can you tell me where I might find the chip info?

 

[Math Geek]

from the product page or possibly the service manual is where i usually find it. what is the EXACT laptop model you are asking about? product number is also very helpful in finding the right documentation.

 

[martykinn]

from the product page or possibly the service manual is where i usually find it. what is the EXACT laptop model you are asking about? product number is also very helpful in finding the right documentation.

HP Pavillion G7 (I no longer have precise system info in Windows 10) There is no other marking on the laptop other than what I posted.

from the product page or possibly the service manual is where i usually find it. what is the EXACT laptop model you are asking about? product number is also very helpful to finding the right documentation.

HP Pavillion G7 Notebook PC
x64-based
Processor AMD Phenom(tm) II P650 Dual-Core Processor, 2600 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

 

[martykinn]

HP Pavillion G7 (I no longer have precise system info in Windows 10) There is no other marking on the laptop other than what I posted.

HP Pavillion G7 Notebook PC
x64-based
Processor AMD Phenom(tm) II P650 Dual-Core Processor, 2600 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

Maybe this help:
Broadcom 4313 802.11b/g/n

 

[martykinn]

HP Pavillion G7 (I no longer have precise system info in Windows 10) There is no other marking on the laptop other than what I posted.

HP Pavillion G7 Notebook PC
x64-based
Processor AMD Phenom(tm) II P650 Dual-Core Processor, 2600 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

from the product page or possibly the service manual is where i usually find it. what is the EXACT laptop model you are asking about? product number is also very helpful to finding the right documentation.

I found this on the HP website product page:
HP Pavilion g7-1150us Notebook PC

 

[Math Geek]

i do not see a win 10 driver for that module. what i see is that the win 8 driver worked for some people and did not work for others.

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp69501-70000/sp69737.exe

you can give that a try and see if it works for you.

and that broadcom model was exactly what i was looking for. i'll keep looking for a few and see what else i can find but give the win 8 driver a shot.

 

[Math Geek]

this is the newest driver i see on broadcom's site. it does not say what it supports. it's dated 2015 so it likely does not support win 10 officially either. but it's newer than the other one i found on hp's site. that's about the best i can find for it.

link

 

[martykinn]

this is the newest driver i see on broadcom's site. it does not say what it supports. it's dated 2015 so it likely does not support win 10 officially either. but it's newer than the other one i found on hp's site. that's about the best i can find for it.

link

I don't know what happened, but I can't get wifi to work at all now. And Device Manager doesn't let me roll back the driver. Roll back driver is faded out. And since I can't get online, there is no way for Windows Update to install any driver that partially worked. The only thing that I can see to do is to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows 10...just to get a wifi signal that cuts out.

 

[Math Geek]

boot into safe mode without networking and you can uninstall the wifi adapter from there. when you reboot, windows will put the generic driver back on there when it finds the "new hardware"

often you can uninstall the adapter from normal mode as well and then reboot.

 

[martykinn]

boot into safe mode without networking and you can uninstall the wifi adapter from there. when you reboot, windows will put the generic driver back on there when it finds the "new hardware"

often you can uninstall the adapter from normal mode as well and then reboot.

Wow...I'm blown away how bad it feels like Windows is screwing with me...

I set up Safe Mode for next boot and it won't enter Windows desktop till I type in a password. The problem is, I never set up a password, I only set up a PIN originally. And since I cannot enter the correct password, I cannot boot beyond safe mode...LOL

The computer will not boot normally

 

[Math Geek]

i've put win 10 on older hardware and run into all kinds of fun issues as well. drivers can be hard to find and may not even work and often there are no drivers for basic features of the chipset.

sometimes with older systems it is easier to stick with win 7 for the drivers alone.

that's odd too. not sure why it asking for a password when none was set.

 

[martykinn]

i've put win 10 on older hardware and run into all kinds of fun issues as well. drivers can be hard to find and may not even work and often there are no drivers for basic features of the chipset.

sometimes with older systems it is easier to stick with win 7 for the drivers alone.

that's odd too. not sure why it asking for a password when none was set.

Did a reinstall of Windows 10. But for some reason the previous install created a 578MB second partition on the SSD. I tried to delete the partition, but it just reverts to unallocated space.

 

[Karadjgne]

Drive B when created by Windows is where Windows stores its cab files, system restore files. It's auto created by the install media and really shouldn't be deleted. Win10 will run Win7 drivers almost always without issue since they use the same code base. Many ppl had issues with Win8.0 drivers and almost as many with 8.1 drivers.

If you goto the support page for the driver downloads, there's listings for Atheros wireless Lan, ralink, Intel, Broadcom. So it looks like you'll need to figure out exactly which wireless chipset you have as they aren't the same. Those will be the win7 x64 drivers and the latest from HP.

 

[martykinn]

Drive B when created by Windows is where Windows stores its cab files, system restore files. It's auto created by the install media and really shouldn't be deleted. Win10 will run Win7 drivers almost always without issue since they use the same code base. Many ppl had issues with Win8.0 drivers and almost as many with 8.1 drivers.

If you goto the support page for the driver downloads, there's listings for Atheros wireless Lan, ralink, Intel, Broadcom. So it looks like you'll need to figure out exactly which wireless chipset you have as they aren't the same. Those will be the win7 x64 drivers and the latest from HP.

Decided to buy a USB wifi adapter.

 

[Math Geek]

probably a good choice overall. this way you know it will have driver support.


good luck

 

[martykinn]

probably a good choice overall. this way you know it will have driver support.


good luck

Do you know of any problems combining a USB wifi adapter and a Bluetooth adapter on a USB hub?

 

[Math Geek]

not that i have seen. i have BT, wifi and wireless keyboard all going on my system right now. wifi and wireless on mobo usb and BT from mobo built in card.

 

[martykinn]

Problem resolved! Bought an inexpensive USB WiFi adapter that seems to work well. Also bought a Bluetooth adapter. So now I have a fully functioning Windows 10 laptop that was never meant to have Windows 10.

 

[Math Geek]

glad you got it sorted out.

enjoy the new working laptop

 

[Shjacks55]

Wow...I'm blown away how bad it feels like Windows is screwing with me...

I set up Safe Mode for next boot and it won't enter Windows desktop till I type in a password. The problem is, I never set up a password, I only set up a PIN originally. And since I cannot enter the correct password, I cannot boot beyond safe mode...LOL

The computer will not boot normally

Wow...I'm blown away how bad it feels like Windows is screwing with me...

I set up Safe Mode for next boot and it won't enter Windows desktop till I type in a password. The problem is, I never set up a password, I only set up a PIN originally. And since I cannot enter the correct password, I cannot boot beyond safe mode...LOL

The computer will not boot normally

Common consumer (HP, Acer, ...) problem. It is "unsafe" to always run in administrator mode so consumer laptops boot into limited user mode, but safe mode boots to true administrator account which is not your account. 802.11n did not exist as an actual standard at that time so at best its a "proposed" 802.11n and not even that because 802.11b/g means old 2.4 Gigahertz only wifi. Some network adapters, and wifi seems worst, write a Windows Native mode stub for each new version but use a user mode windows 95 program to do all the wifi processing. Win2000 dropped win95 support. WinXP brought back win95 support. Vista again dropped win95 support, Win7 added it back. Upgrading to Win8/8.1/10 again removes Win95 support. Since your fastest wifi is slower than USB 2.1 an external USB dongle should work fine. Internal wifi is either in motherboard or an M.2 card or mini pci card which is as easy to switch as upgrading laptop Ram. Rem turn off internal in BIOS if using external. Problem: Broadcom, like video company Nvidia, make chips and devices. Their drivers are for their devices, that work with the PCI identification VEN_ and DEV_ numbers from the device. Card makers that buy the chips use different ID for their Card/devices, causing driver problems. Motherboard makers same issue. I used to reverse engineer drivers but its not time smart.

 

[martykinn]

Common consumer (HP, Acer, ...) problem. It is "unsafe" to always run in administrator mode so consumer laptops boot into limited user mode, but safe mode boots to true administrator account which is not your account. 802.11n did not exist as an actual standard at that time so at best its a "proposed" 802.11n and not even that because 802.11b/g means old 2.4 Gigahertz only wifi. Some network adapters, and wifi seems worst, write a Windows Native mode stub for each new version but use a user mode windows 95 program to do all the wifi processing. Win2000 dropped win95 support. WinXP brought back win95 support. Vista again dropped win95 support, Win7 added it back. Upgrading to Win8/8.1/10 again removes Win95 support. Since your fastest wifi is slower than USB 2.1 an external USB dongle should work fine. Internal wifi is either in motherboard or an M.2 card or mini pci card which is as easy to switch as upgrading laptop Ram. Rem turn off internal in BIOS if using external. Problem: Broadcom, like video company Nvidia, make chips and devices. Their drivers are for their devices, that work with the PCI identification VEN_ and DEV_ numbers from the device. Card makers that buy the chips use different ID for their Card/devices, causing driver problems. Motherboard makers same issue. I used to reverse engineer drivers but its not time smart.

I went the WiFi dongle route. Bluetooth dongle too. Everything normally needed seems to work just fine now. Upgraded the super-low quality 1600 x 900 17.3" laptop display to a 22" full HD IPS TV. 😊

Windows 10 joy on a budget.