Toshiba laptop

96tacolx

96tacolx

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2005
Location
Gastonia
Had a friend give me a laptop a few months ago that wouldn't boot up. Recently a co-worker took it to a buddy that was able to get it working and I had him load windows 7 on it.

This is my first laptop so I am quite unfamiliar with them. My question is, how do I know if it has a wireless internet card in it?
It has the Realtek RTL8101E family pci-e fast ethernet nic (ndis 6.20) in it. Is this just for the ethernet cable to hook up to or is it wireless too? Also a little behind times as far as how wireless works with laptops

It is a Toshiba Satellite A215
 
It is most likely equipped with a wireless card, look in the "Devices and Printers" and there should be a wireless card listed, also on the windows toolbar there should be a grayed out 5 bar signal indicator...if you can hook the laptop up to a wired Ethernet connection and do the windows update, the wireless card most likely wont show up until you let windows 7 install drivers via windows update.
 
This def has internal wireless which means you will need a wireless router to get a signal from your internet box. All of the Satellite laptops have built in wireless.
 
Yep it has wireless. I'm on a Toshiba Salellite (lap top right now. I really like the Toshshiba's. I've had Dell, gateway, IBM and a couple of others and the Toshiba has by far been the best of them.
 
I continued to look last night with no luck. I don't see it listed in my "network and sharing center"
I made sure I was caught up on my up dates. The one thing I don't have at the moment is a wireless router. Do I have to be near one before it will show up in the networking center?

Thanks
 
Look at your system tray (small icons at the bottom right corner next to the clock). That is where all your running applications are showing. You should see a small computer with a red "X" over it. That is your wired internet. In that same tray there should be the same icon but with two computers, that is your wireless. Click on it, if there are no wireless networks available it will tell you this or that you need to setup a wireless network. Go somewhere that has free Wifi and play around with it.
 
Ok. Just found this on Toshiba website for my laptop
Communications
• Webcam and microphone built into LCD bezel
• Modem9
• 10/100 Ethernet
• Integrated Wi-Fi® compliant wireless:10
o Atheros® 802.11b/g wireless-LAN

Is the Atheros a card or built into the motherboard? There is also an on/ off switch on the front. Supposed to light up when on. Will it only do that when near Wi-Fi?
 
y2kcrawler said:
Look at your system tray (small icons at the bottom right corner next to the clock). That is where all your running applications are showing. You should see a small computer with a red "X" over it. That is your wired internet. In that same tray there should be the same icon but with two computers, that is your wireless. Click on it, if there are no wireless networks available it will tell you this or that you need to setup a wireless network. Go somewhere that has free Wifi and play around with it.
Click to expand...

I'm on the laptop now. I don't see the two computer icon in that tray. Just the one for wired. Just curious, will it show up even without a driver? I look up Atheros and all I can find is driver updates/ installs
 
It most likely wont show up without a driver, windows update should of installed the wireless drivers for you but it may not have, get the drivers off the Toshiba support website...
 
My Toshiba doesn't have the two comp. icon. It will have a comp w/ red X, or if the wireless is turned on that icon will change to signal bars like a cell phone. There should be a switch or a button to press to turn it on somewhere. It will look like an antenna with signal waves on the sides.
 
Smokeater said:
My Toshiba doesn't have the two comp. icon. It will have a comp w/ red X, or if the wireless is turned on that icon will change to signal bars like a cell phone. There should be a switch or a button to press to turn it on somewhere. It will look like an antenna with signal waves on the sides.
Click to expand...

Youre right, Im not on my satellite right now. Ive had to reformat the HD on mine a few times now so I have a bastard OS. I couldnt find drivers for mine on the toshiba website for some reason or another, but I did find a driver for a gateway computer and installed it and it works just fine.

This driver looks like it will work - http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/NE...tel-802-11bg-WiFi-Driver-8-02-12-9000w2.shtml
 
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