Getting the Wireless Card to Work with Windows 7 on the Thinkpad T43p

In this post I’m going to go a little off track and talk about non-web stuff 🙂  I recently decided to take my old IBM Thinkpad T43 and wipe it clean so I could test the Windows 7 RC OS on it. I have only now started playing with it and testing it. The first challenge I have faced so far is getting the wireless card to work.  However, I have finally resolved it with a little help from Google.

Here’s how you can get it to work.

For some reason, Windows 7 will allow your Intel PRO Wireless card to work if you install the XP drivers.

1. Go to http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-70504 and download the XP driver. It’s an exe file.  If you don’t have an ethernet cable handy you may want to download it onto another computer and copy it to your Thinkpad using a USB drive, which is what I did.
2. Copy this file to your Windows 7 desktop and double-click to install.  It will most likely install to a Drivers folder in the root of your system.
3. You now need to upgrade your wireless driver device to see this driver file.  To do this, go to Start->Control Panel->Hardware and Sound.  Under Devices and Printers, click on Device Manager.
4. In the Device Manager dialog, you will see a list of the devices that Windows 7 recognizes as well as a list of “Other devices” with little yellow exclamation mark icons on them indicating that they’re not recognized.  At the top of that list should be something like “Other Network Device” or something similar.
5. Double click on this to open up its properties.  Next, click on “Update Driver”.  If Update Driver is greyed out, click on “Change Settings” which should now allow you to update your driver.
6. Click on “Browse my computer for driver software”
7. Click on “Browse” and then navigate to the C:/DRIVERS folder.
8. Windows 7 will now find the new Intel Pro Wireless driver that you installed in step 2 and update your wireless card to use this driver.
9. If all goes smoothly you should now be able to use your Wireless card. 🙂

I hope this helps someone out there who’s having trouble getting their wireless working with Windows 7 on their Thinkpad T43. It may work on other versions of the Thinkpad T40’s series, but I can only vouch for the T43 because that’s what I use.