# How to find out what wireless card I have



## JoeNicholson (Jan 20, 2013)

I recently purchased a used laptop and reinstalled windows 7 on it and the wireless card doesn't seem to be showing up, I've looked at a few posts on here and when going into device manager under network adapters is "Realtek RTL8102E/RTL8103E Family PCI-E fast Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.20)
Below that under other devices is "network controller" with a caution sign and says it does not have drivers installed, any help would be appreciated either how I could find out what the card is. Or a link as to where I could download the drivers would be even better as I'm not that competent with these things, thank you in advance


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## Jason09 (Jan 3, 2009)

Hi and welcome to TSF!

I would suggest downloading and installing Everest to see if it can detect a wireless network card. I assume this laptop was supposed to have all hardware still intact?


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## JoeNicholson (Jan 20, 2013)

Jason09 said:


> Hi and welcome to TSF!
> 
> I would suggest downloading and installing Everest to see if it can detect a wireless network card. I assume this laptop was supposed to have all hardware still intact?


Thank you for the welcome! 
I shall try using Everest when I get the chance, should be later today hopefully. I assume I am okay to copy the download to a USB mem stick and transfer over from my pc?
And yes, everything should be working. Plus it does seem to be picking the card up but as the drivers are not installed it doesn't seem to know what it is, le sigh -.-


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## Tomken15 (Dec 7, 2011)

Hi JoeNicholson and Welcome to the forum.

You can find this info in the Registry.

From Start type *regedit* > Enter > Yes and navigate :-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/WindowsNT/CurrentVersion/NetworkCards

With the NetworkCards folder expanded, two numbers will be displayed - one is for your Wireless Adapter and the other is for the LAN and clicking on each will give you the info.

After you've made a note of it, close the sections back up then click on File then Exit.

You can find everthing else about the computer by typing *msinfo32* from Start then pressing Enter


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## JoeNicholson (Jan 20, 2013)

Thankyou for this advice, like I said with my last post. I shall try this when I get the opportunity, I am at work at the moment (night shift). So hopefully later today I get the chance. Is this a relatively simple process, I know it sounds it. But I am not confident with messing with reg stuff haha


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## Tomken15 (Dec 7, 2011)

Hi Joe and thanks for the PM and you're welcome.

The LAN adapter you have listed could be an OEM one and once you've ID'd the Wireless card - if it has one - would be to go to the computer vendor's support site.

Otherwise Realtek drivers can be found at Realtek but it's not uncommon to have a different brand to the LAN for the wireless adapter.

*Edit...*For your last post - it will also be in msinfo32 but in mine, it's quite aways down.


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## JoeNicholson (Jan 20, 2013)

So instead of regedit is should search msinfo32? 
Thanks for the the advice regarding drivers, I'm almost positive it has a wireless card. I brought the laptop from a family friend who I've visited before whilst using it.


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## Tomken15 (Dec 7, 2011)

Yes, sometimes it's quicker via regedit depending what you're looking for, but there's quite a lot of info for you to delve into in msinfo32.


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