[SOLVED] WiFi Card Not Detected

RazorJ

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Apr 14, 2014
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So I'm not sure if anyone can help, but I recently bought an TP-Link Archer T4E AC1200 Dual Band WiFi card with the intent of being able to move my daughters PC in her room without the need for miles of cable.

I got the card installed, but windows wouldn't detect it at all. Tried all 3 stubby PCI ports, and nothing. Little light on the back of the card wouldn't even light up. Tried it in my PC, the light came on, and windows found it just fine.

I tried to google it, but all of the answers were for either different cards, or people said they plugged them into the larger slots and they worked. I tried to do that, but oddly on this board, the lower larger slots sit a few mm farther forward than the stubby or top PCIE slots, making it impossible to plug it in.

I'm at a bit of a loss on this one, I know it's not defective, so returning it isn't really an option once it's opened.

Her PC is an i5-4590 with 16GB of 1866MHz ram, a 120GB SSD, GTX 980, on an AsRock Z97 Anniversary board. I know it's not exactly modern, but it still should accept a WiFi card, shouldn't it? Sadly the drivers don't have the .inf file in them, so I can't manually install the drivers. Tried hooking up a CD ROM and using the disk that came with it, no joy with that. Maybe the PC is just too old to accept a WiFi card?

Thanks

This is a photo of the board, as you can see the bottom PCI slots are forward for some silly reason. Can't say I've ever seen that.

View: https://imgur.com/a/uaSt8B0
 
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Solution
Make sure than both the 24-pin and 8-pin power connectors are firmly connected to the motherboard. Your PSU is the bare minimum for the GPU, assuming the PSU is fully operational.

Do you have another PSU or GPU that could be swapped into this rig for troubleshooting further?

RazorJ

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Apr 14, 2014
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If you remove the GPU (and use integrated video) and install the TP-Link Archer T4E AC1200 Dual Band WiFi into the PCIex16 slot, does it work? PCIe X16 slots and backward compatible with lesser PCIe devices.

I tried it, and the light came on, I'm going to assume windows detected it but her monitor is a DVI connection so I wasn't able to hook a monitor up to see.
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
Make sure than both the 24-pin and 8-pin power connectors are firmly connected to the motherboard. Your PSU is the bare minimum for the GPU, assuming the PSU is fully operational.

Do you have another PSU or GPU that could be swapped into this rig for troubleshooting further?
 
Solution

RazorJ

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Apr 14, 2014
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I tried putting the card in another slot without the GPU and no joy on it powering up.

As for the GPU, yeah, but my daughter really only watches Netflix and YouTube, and it's my spare. Apart from a GT430 I haven't much else to try.
 

RazorJ

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Apr 14, 2014
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Well I ripped half the PC apart, reseated all the plugs and cards, turned it on, and now it works....

Guess I didn't have something seated right even though the PC was working just fine.