Category: Geeks r Us
Hi.
I recently aquired a new Toshiba mini nb505 netbook a few days ago from best buy. I tried using the windows 7 starter edition that it came with but couldn't stand using it at all. The hardware was lagging rather spectacularly. I opted to install windows xp on the machine. I have an xp dvd image that I used which detected all the drivers in the machine accept for the on-board realtek 8188CE wlan adapter.
I went and downloaded the drivers from realtek's website, installed them and now though the wlan card is showing up in xp, I cannot see any wireless networks, let alone connect to them. I also know that function f5 or f8 should disable or enable the wireless adapter on this machine, and I've also played around with the power settings on the card to no avail. I do not want to go back to windows 7 if I can help it, and I cannot easily replace the internal wireless card without voiding the netbook's warranty, I think.
Any ideas on how this might possibly be made to work with xp? The odd thing is that I was able to get a usb adapter to work just fine, so I know that xp is at least seeing the adapter and connecting it to a wireless connection 2 in the control panel. The usb one is a lynksis adapter that I'd really rather not have to carry with me. However, if it comes down to it, I could probably boot up linux on this netbook and get the wireless realtek adapter working under that and use windows in a virtual machine, but I really don't feel like doing that unless I have to. Linux can become really tricky to use on some kinds of hardware.
Any help would be much appreciated,
Shaun
Call the tech support for your machine and ask them about drivers that will work for XP.