Windows 7 Reinstalled Windows 7 - Help with Ethernet driver

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djs05101985

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Hi All -

Full disclosure, I am a "Mac" guy (apologies).

My grandmother just moved in with us and wanted a windows machine. She purchased an AIO Dell Inspiron 2034 Intel Pentium (SKU 5954009). The new computer came with Windows 8 pre-installed, which made her cry because she was used to Windows 7. I happen to have Windows 7 install disks so I blew through the partitions and installed Windows 7. After the fact, I realized we now need to find and install the drivers. Again, I'm a mac person and I'm feeling a little over my head. I don't know how to get the drivers without ALREADY HAVING internet. I obviously have internet on my mac machines but how can one transfer that content to a windows machine?

Any direction would be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance.
 
Solution
Generally speaking you should be able to go to www.dell.com and select support by product, plug in your service tag number and it should help identify the network adapter card you have installed and it's associated driver should be available.
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Hopefully you have left the recovery partition on the Dell - if so you can run a recovery and download the drivers you need from the Dell site before reinstalling Win 7. (Dell recovery boot is usually achieved by pressing F8 during startup).
 
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patcooke said:
Hopefully you have left the recovery partition on the Dell - if so you can run a recovery and download the drivers you need from the Dell site before reinstalling Win 7. (Dell recovery boot is usually achieved by pressing F8 during startup).
Click to expand...
HARD SWALLOW ... Recovery partition? Lol.

I was able to get the files onto a jump drive using a neighbor's windows machine.

Thanks all.
 
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Okay .... I may have spoken too soon. So the drivers that I installed did not work. And I'm pretty sure I blew through the recovery partition. BUT I now have access to 1) a working Windows machine and 2) a properly formatted jump drive. The machine is the Dell Inspiron AIO 2035. The only print drivers I was able to find were for the Dell Inspiron AIO 2020. (This website Link Removed )

Again, I much appreciate your help.

p.s. - I did a search on the web link I posted for Inspiron 2035 and got no hits.
 
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It would be a good idea to confirm whether or not you still have the recovery partition - you could need it at some point for a number of reasons and before disposing of it you should at least have burned recovery dvd's. Just to make sure I'd go to Control Panel,
administrative tools,computer management, storage, disk management. Look there to see if there is a disk partition marked recovery.
 
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Thanks Pat. I can confirm, recovery partition is gone. It always amazes me how difficult it is to get the ethernet cards working on Windows machines ... The frustration continues.

To recap - we have an AIO machine, paperwork provided by Grandma indicates it is an Inspiron 2035, had Windows 8 and I did a poor job installing Windows 7. Did not retain the recovery partition when I downgraded and am having difficulty getting network card working. Thus far only have been able to find the Dell link posted above for the network card, which is for the Inspiron 2020 not the 2035.
 
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Have you tried that driver - most of the Dell drivers are common over a range of both hardware and even Windows editions.
 
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Generally speaking you should be able to go to www.dell.com and select support by product, plug in your service tag number and it should help identify the network adapter card you have installed and it's associated driver should be available.
 
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Solution
patcooke said:
Have you tried that driver - most of the Dell drivers are common over a range of both hardware and even Windows editions.
Click to expand...
Yes sir. No dice.

Trouble said:
Generally speaking you should be able to go to www.dell.com and select support by product, plug in your service tag number and it should help identify the network adapter card you have installed and it's associated driver should be available.
Click to expand...

Service Tag Number .... I will have to try that when Grandma wakes up tomorrow. Thanks Trouble
 
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Yes the Service Tag should be either on the top of the PC or the back. On an AIO it will likely be on the back, with an accompanying Express Service Code.
 
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Trouble said:
Yes the Service Tag should be either on the top of the PC or the back. On an AIO it will likely be on the back, with an accompanying Express Service Code.
Click to expand...

Ok. Used the service tag to get the drivers. The install failed due to an "incompatible OS version". Is it possible that the hardware only have OS8 drivers? So by installing Windows 7, we now are unable to get the internet working?? I really jacked up this computer
 
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"Generally speaking you should be able to go to www.dell.com and select support by product, plug in your service tag number and it should help identify the network adapter card you have installed and it's associated driver should be available."

This is the beast and easiest way to deal with it provided that Dell ever produced drivers for Windows 7 for this pc. If not then you are reduced to trying any drivers available and testing them for compatibility. In the mean time I'd be checking with Dell about cost and availability of a set of recovery dvd's for the pc. It is not difficult with a bit of time and effort to make Windows 8 look like and feel Windows 7.
 
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Hmmmm. Generally you have an option near the top, after you plug in your service tag to select your OS. Was that available to you and were you able to select Windows 7 with the correct system architecture (32 or 64 bit)?

We could try doing it the hard way.
Open device manager
expand network adapters
right click the problem adapter and choose properties.
Select the "Details" tab along the top.
Use the drop down arrow to change from Device description to Hardware ids
In the text box labeled "Value"
right click and choose select all
right click again and choose copy
paste the results into your next post or paste them into a notepad text document and attach it to your next post
We'll see if we can help identify that adapter, that way.
Should look something like this (not necessarily exactly the same).

PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&SUBSYS_E0001458&REV_03
PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&SUBSYS_E0001458
PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&CC_020000
PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&CC_0200

IF you copy and paste the first line into google, I find in my case that it is a Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller for which I just go to Realtek and download the driver from the manufacturer. You should be able to do something similar.
 
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