Installing wireless notebook card without PC?

[Dean C]

Well I'm about 40 miles away from my install CD and I can't be bothered with going all the way home for a CD ;) I've been reading the online manual for my card (http://www-uk.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=UK%2FLayout&cid=1138056681838&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper) and it says not to insert the card until the install from the CD tells you to. I can recall when I was running ubuntu on my laptop that I could install the card merely by downloading the drivers off of LinkSys's website. I didn't need the supplied manufacturer CD at all.

So, perhaps if when inserting the card and when windows asks where to install the card from, if I point it to the folder which contains the downloaded drives from Linksys, will it work?

[DirectPixel]

In a word, Yes. You should have no problems at all.

The advice to not insert the device after you've installed the software is to prevent newbies from messing up the installation process. There are quite a few additional screens you will need to go thru if you plug it in first and install drivers later.

But I'm figuring, if you could install drivers for it using Ubuntu, you'll have no problems doing the same under Windows.

[tgillespie]

Have never had a problem installing the actual device before the drivers. I know network cards, printers, and cameras are notorious for this. Mainly so the un-savy users will install all the excess software they want you to install. I however do not want a third party program monitoring and adjusting my hardware so I choose to install using .inf only. My advice would be to put the card in, boot up, find the .inf file and install from device manager. I'm 99% sure it will work.

[Floris]

You don't need the Windows CD unless you're going to use their drivers. Just put the card in and get the driver from the web site.

[Vile]

As the others said, it definitely works, and I've done it many times without any problems. Stick in the card and point to the drivers and it will install the drivers and get the wireless working just fine. The only difference that is made doing it this way, is that windows will manage the wireless connections, versus the Linkys utility in this case, so unless you really need to have the Linksys utility installed, use just the drivers instead of the CD.