Is this why I've been a Mac person the last 10 years?

[frayadjacent]

I bought my partner a refurbished Thinkpad for Christmas last year.  He's a tough person to buy for and I thought I'd finally triumphed: now he could play PC games (while I vid!  it was going to be perfect!).  

He played a few games for two or three weeks, then stopped using the computer.  :(

So, this week I decided to commandeer it.  I started by installing a fresh version of Windows 7, taking advantage of my last quarter of student status to get it free from my university.  Installation went fine, but now the damn thing won't connect to the internet.  Apparently there is a problem with a network adapter or a driver or something.  Windows helpfully suggests that, if drivers aren't properly installed, I connect to the internet to see if updates are available.

I've found some instructions but they all involve clicking on various icons or services that don't exist.  Maybe because the driver isn't installed? 

I generally don't take a position on the whole Mac vs Windows thing, mainly cause I'm not that impressed with Macs and I clearly don't know much about PCs, but this is really a bad start.

Comments

[calvinahobbes]

You could maybe download the drivers onto USB via mac...? *hands* Alternatively, can you downgrade back to the older version of the OS?

Also, did you try asking Google rather than asking Microsoft? I can usually find a helpful forum thread whenever I have a problem...

[frayadjacent]

Yeah, I did try googling it, but the solutions I found didn't work. I did end up downloading the driver from my mac, but it looks like the computer is having trouble even recognizing the wireless network adapter -- it doesn't show up on the "Devices" list, though there is an unknown device. A bunch of the devices have the exclamation mark of doom. :( I'm going to call the store I bought it from when they open.

I'm hoping I don't have to downgrade, because I kept getting warnings that the OS was not an authentic installation, along with requests for a key. Which is a little annoying; I mean I would have thought that this refurbished laptop store would at least put an authentic OS on the damn computer before selling it.

Thanks for the brainstorming! It honestly did not occur to me to download the drivers on another computer, because I never use flash drives, and my external HD isn't PC-compatible. In fact, I had to dig up a flash drive from undergrad days -- 8 years ago! Thank god for hoarding, huh?

[calvinahobbes]

Haah, hoarders unite! You never know when something might come in handy >_>

Urgh, Windows just always sounds like so much trouble! I hope you find a solution.

I... think it's pretty skeevy that you bought a refurbished computer with an illegal OS copy on it? I would maybe complain about that...

[frayadjacent]

I... think it's pretty skeevy that you bought a refurbished computer with an illegal OS copy on it?

I know! And yet I was too lazy to do anything about it, especially because, while it was the ultimat cause of my problem, it wasn't really relevant to solving the issue.

I ended up installing Ubuntu instead!

[calvinahobbes]

I just keep hearing good things about Ubuntu! I think at this point I'm pretty much decided to try that if I ever buy a non-Apple machine. (Too bad I don't get to change my work computer from Windoze.)

[littleheaven]

Yeah, one of the reasons I prefer my mac to my pc is that It. Just. Works.

You probably need to go to your Device Manager and select your network adapter, write down what it is, search the Win7 drivers on another computer, download to a flash drive and then transfer them. I seem to remember having similar issues updating an old PC fro XP to 7.

[frayadjacent]

Thanks for this! This is totally what I needed to do, but it turns the computer is not even recognizing the network adapter, so I don't know what kind it is. :( I'm gonna call the store I bought it from when they open.

[littleheaven]

Wow, how weird. Normally it at least lists it in the device manager with a big yellow question mark beside it. Ah, Windows, how I despise thee. I'm using Win 8 on my vidding laptop, and I've never had to use System Restore so much in my life. Last weekend I ran updates on a few programs, and when it restarted it couldn't find the operating system! I almost reformatted the whole hard drive, before I finally worked out (by fluke) how to access the backup partition from the start menu. Not before I'd spent $40 on a recovery disc I didn't need, though. *sigh*

[frayadjacent]

Oh wow!! Your story beats mine by a long shot. Yeah, the Device Manager had a bunch of devices with the yellow question mark listed, but nothing related to wireless. There was one that said "Unknown Device", so I guess that was it?

Anyway, all over now! :) I was sort of looking forward to using MS Office 2013, which I can also get for free through my school for another ... 2 months? (I don't know if this is a normal thing or if it's because we're in Seattle and 1/4 of our buildings are named for people associated with Microsoft.) I've heard that Office for Windows always works a bit better than Office for Mac, which is pretty much the only kind I've used since ~2003.

[littleheaven]

Can you get the cloud version of Office? I've heard that's pretty good. And, yeah, Office for Mac is not great. I use it at work and it's really slow and you can tell the Mac really doesn't enjoy running it.

What are you using instead? OpenOffice is available for Linux, or I guess Google Docs would do in a pinch.

[frayadjacent]

I probably will just use OpenOffice. The biggest issue is being able to access Word or ppt documents that other people have created. I definitely prefer Word and Powerpoint to their OpenOffice counterparts, but for most purposes I can use a much simpler text editor or, for work, an open-source type-setting system for designed for technical writing. For presentations I'll have to use PPT on my mac or OpenOffice. In either case I'd save them as PDFs at the end anyway.

[lilly_the_kid]

I'm really not sure if this applies to you at all, but I figure it's worth a try.
I've had a Thinkpad for the last six years and whenever I reinstalled windows I needed to use a very specific net-framework version (which I downloaded with another computer) and then I could download all kinds of drivers and programmes directly from Lenovo. Even though my computer is quite old they still have a package for it online.

Again, sorry, if this won't work for you, it's been a year or two since I last did this and this is the kind of information that I tend to forget pretty quickly...

[frayadjacent]

Thanks! It didn't occur to me to check Lenovo! It turns out the computer is having trouble with the adapter itself -- I can't even see what kind it has -- but once that gets sorted out I'll do exactly this to get the driver.