Permanently remove a driver?

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ker_01

Vista Ultimate x64 on Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P with quad core and netgear
WG311T wireless card.

Still trying to get wireless to work; on rare occassion, some
combination of safe mode, voodoo chants, uninstalling the card,
sacrificial offerings, booting in regular mode, sage smudge sticks, and
reinstalling the card will result in temporary internet connectivity,
which is lost the next reboot or if the machine goes into suspend.

I don't have a replacement card in hand yet, so I'm still wasting time
trying to get this one working (seems like it shouldn't be this hard!)

I found the following which claims to work with this model wireless
adapter:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14833
but I can't even get to the point of trying it out, because when I
uninstall the adapter in Device manager, then scan for new hardware, it
automatically reloads the netgear drivers. When I say update driver and
try to pick the new driver, it says the existing driver is up to date
and doesn't update like I asked it to.

I'm assuming I need to permanently remove the old driver, but I'm not
sure how to do that without a fresh complete install. Can anyone give me
any hints?

Also, listed under network adapters there are several WAN Miniport
adapters (IP, IPv6, etc), Teredo, and isatap.gateway.2wire.net (my DSL
modem). Should I leave all of these enabled, or might disabling any
improve my chances of getting a stable connection? I don't do any
network sharing (at least not yet)- I just need to be able to connect to
the internet.

Also, when I try to pick drivers from the list (after unchecking the box
for compatible drivers) I get Code 31 errors when trying to install any
driver, including the netgear ones. I still haven't found a satisfactory
explanation of what a Code 31 represents or how to avoid it, so any
information on that would also be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
Keith
 
I gave up on Netgear wireless NICs, and went back to Cat5 Cable. It worked
now and again, then had a heart attack. Tried all their firmware crap, no
more!!!
 
ker_01 said:
when I
uninstall the adapter in Device manager, then scan for new hardware, it
automatically reloads the netgear drivers. When I say update driver and
try to pick the new driver, it says the existing driver is up to date
and doesn't update like I asked it to.

I'm assuming I need to permanently remove the old driver, but I'm not
sure how to do that without a fresh complete install. Can anyone give me
any hints?
Click to expand...

You need to delete the relevant .inf file from %windir%\inf. It will be
called oemX.inf. There will also be an oemX.pnf.
Do this:
cmd
cd %windir%\inf
for %a in (oem*.inf) do find /i "WG311T" %a >>out.txt
notepad out.txt

Where I have put "WG311T" above in the for %a line, you need to make sure
it's written just like the device name is in device manager. Capitals don't
matter (because of the /i (ignore case), but if it's "WG-311-T" then you
need to write it like that, with the dashes.

This will open up a notepad windows showing you the results of a text search
through oem*.inf. Look through out.txt to see which of those oemX.inf files
is the netgear one. The stuff might not mean much to you, but it'll point at
which of those inf files describes your Netgear card. You get a header
(filename) like --------OEM6.INF and following that will be the matching
text, so you will be looking for the filename (------OEMX.INF) just above
any netgear stuff that is shown.

Remember the inf file name (e.g. oem12.inf).
type:
attrib -h -r -s oem12.*
del oem12.*

What you are doing here is deleting the file that we found was the right
one, and also its .PNF counterpart. On XP, .pnf files always seem to be
read-only, so we have to use attrib to remove that read-only attribute. On
my new Vista machine it looks like the .pnf files are not read-only, but
some of the .inf files are, which I have never come across pre-Vista, so the
above commands are going to remove read-only & system & hidden attributes on
both .inf & .pnf just to be sure.

After doing the above, uninstall the item from device manager and it should
no longer find the already installed driver.
 
Carl Farrington said:
news:[email protected]...
Click to expand...

Forget all that I just said.
Vista has a new feature that I like. Fancy that :)
They have extended the driver details tab through device manager!

In device manager, double-click your problematic device (WG311T).

Go to the Details tab. Where it says "Property:" (combobox), change from
"Device Description" to "Inf name".

This tells you which .inf file is used for installing the driver.

Go to cmd prompt again, and to %windir%\inf

Delete that file and its corresponding .pnf file. Job done.

I forgot to say, if you have UAC enabled you will probably need to 'Run as
Administrator' your Command Prompt.
 
Carl Farrington said:
Forget all that I just said.
Vista has a new feature that I like. Fancy that :)
They have extended the driver details tab through device manager!

In device manager, double-click your problematic device (WG311T).

Go to the Details tab. Where it says "Property:" (combobox), change from
"Device Description" to "Inf name".

This tells you which .inf file is used for installing the driver.

Go to cmd prompt again, and to %windir%\inf

Delete that file and its corresponding .pnf file. Job done.

I forgot to say, if you have UAC enabled you will probably need to 'Run as
Administrator' your Command Prompt.
Click to expand...

Oh, BTW, only delete the file if it's an oemX.inf file. If it's
"netsomething.inf" then that's an inbuilt Microsoft .inf file, and deleting
that file will break the ability to install some of Vista's inbuilt net
drivers. I gathered from what you said that this was a netgear-supplied
driver that you were using, so you should be OK, but I'm just letting you
know.

I'll stop replying to myself now.
 
Carl- I appreciate your fabulously informative responses. In addition to
helping solve the problem, I'm glad to understand the 'whys' so I can
troubleshoot more effectively in the future.

I'm eager to get home (where I have this PC for now, so I can work on it at
night) and try your suggestions out.

Many thanks for taking the time to respond,
Keith
 
Keith R said:
Carl- I appreciate your fabulously informative responses. In addition to
helping solve the problem, I'm glad to understand the 'whys' so I can
troubleshoot more effectively in the future.

I'm eager to get home (where I have this PC for now, so I can work on it
at night) and try your suggestions out.

Many thanks for taking the time to respond,
Keith
Click to expand...

You're welcome, lets just hope it helps. I suspect you're still going to be
stuck with this Code 31 from the new driver though but we'll see.
 
You're welcome, lets just hope it helps. I suspect you're still going
to be stuck with this Code 31 from the new driver though but we'll
see.
Click to expand...

Carl- your instructions were great, and I was able to delete the
drivers. I then tried reinstalling the netgear mfg drivers for vista
x64, and the atheros drivers (which supposedly worked as well, according
to websites and/or other posters). In my case, neither worked. I didn't
get the Code 31 this time, but I'm still hanging every time I boot up in
regular (not safe) mode. The netgear card has worked flawlessly in XP
for the past year, so it is definitely the drivers that are the issue.

At this point, since I have 4GB Ram and haven't bought the other 4 yet,
I'm tempted to just go back to x32 and live with 4GB ram until either
they come out with a patch or service pack that fixes my issue, until I
can get a modem certified to work with x64, or move my entire office so
I can put this PC next to a landline. The first seems to be the most
reasonable at this point in time.

It is easy to intellectually support MS (new technology doesn't always
work with old hardware) until you actually can't use your own equipment.
The frustration is that netgear actually says these drivers will work,
and looking on newegg, I didn't see any 'affordable' adapter cards that
were guaranteed to work with x64.

Thanks again for the information and assistance,
Keith
 
ker_01 said:
Thanks again for the information and assistance,
Keith
Click to expand...

You're more than welcome. Thanks for the kind thanks. I just Googled this
WG311T and I see it's a 108mbps card, which as you said means it's an
Atheros based card, which I happen like quite a lot (not for the 108mbps
that I never see, but just for the reliability and general performance).

However I have been using a lot of Asus WL-138G (Broadcom chip) cards for
the last 8 months or so because many of my customers have been buying
slimline Dell machines, and these cards come with the half-height backplate
necessary for the slim case. I have found these cards to work very reliably
as well so perhaps you could see if they have Vista x64 support. I can
confirm that Vista-32bit has inbuilt support for these cards - no drivers
reqiuired. Also, at least you know it's a totally different chip/driver than
your current Netgear item.

The problem with both Atheros and Broadcom is that they don't allow you to
go and download reference drivers from their website. They only supply the
drivers to the OEM (Netgear, Asus, Linksys, IBM, HP etc.), and quite often
these guys don't bother releasing a newer version to the public, even though
the basic reference driver has been created by Atheros or Broadcom. So
trying to find an updated driver can be a nightmare. For example, I use a
Hewlett Packard-supplied driver for these Asus cards on XP, and I have to
force the driver onto the card (choose "have disk", and ignore the warning
that the driver isn't meant for this card). As I said before they are truly
plug-n-play on Vista (32bit) though.
 
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