I need to know if my laptop has wireless internet. It is a Toshiba and it looks kind of old. So I don’t really know how to tell.

Take a closer look at your laptop. Do you have a wireless switch somewhere on the side? Does the LED by the switch light up if you turn on the switch? If it does, you have an internal wireless card installed.

Here’s another way. Take a look at the device manager. All laptop hardware components are listed in the device manager.

Right click on My Computer, click on Manage, click on Device Manager. Click on the “+” sign by the Network adapters. Do you see an entry related to the wireless card adapter in there?

If you do, you have an internal wireless card installed.

I just got an IBM T41 and had to reformat the HD. I installed Win XP Pro which loads fine. I am told this model has “built in” wireless, but I cannot figure out how to access it. Do I have to reinstall something? Please help!! TIA

You have do download and install the wireless card driver. Visit the IBM (Lenovo) website, find downloads for your laptop model and operating system and install the Wi-Fi card driver.

I have an HP Pavilion dv6000 that came with Vista. I am having problems with it freezing literally “every 6 minutes” when I’m using wireless….this is NOT an issue at all if I have the Ethernet plugged in directly from the DSL modem. I have a Linksys router, and I installed the latest firmware. I don’t know if this is an HP problem, a Vista issue, or if I simply have a bad wireless card. Anyone else experiencing this? (I’ve had this problem both with the laptop plugged in and just on the battery).

Thank you in advance for any help!

Sounds like this one will be a tough one because I don’t know any utility for testing the wireless card. In most cases to find out if your problem is related to the wireless card is replacing it with another good working wireless card.
Here’s what you can try. Probably you have original HP software load and it has a lot of programs running on the background, you can see them in the notification area of the task bar (lower right corner). Try turning off these programs one by one and see if it makes any difference. It’s possible that you laptop freezes because of some kind of software conflict.
Try reloading your laptop from scratch. Backup all personal files and run the restore (recovery) CDs or DVDs.
Sounds like you installed the latest firmware for the router but did you check if you have the latest BIOS installed on your laptop? Sometimes these kind of issue can be fixed with upgrading the BIOS.

I have a problem with my Latitude D500 notebook. It works fine in most wireless environments but my own at home. It may work for 1 minute or 15 – then it freezes, requiring a force quit.
Using Netgear WGT624 v3 wireless router and Netgear WG511T adapter. Have installed latest software.
Also, after it freezes, the Latitude can’t load any browser when connected to the router by Ethernet cable.

The notebook works fine in most wireless environments, so I assume there is nothing wrong with the wireless adapter or notebook itself. You installed the latest software, but did you check if there is a firmware upgrade for the router? My friend had a similar problem with his notebook and we resolved the problem by upgrading the wireless router to the latest firmware.

I own a Toshiba 1905-S303 and I purchased a MSI6833B MiniPCI Wireless card. The card seems to install fine and I think I got it to start the Microsoft Zero Configuration correctly.
However, when I try to look for a signal it tells me that there are no signals available. I know that there is a signal available because I can find my router and connect perfectly when I plug in my PCMCIA card in.
I bought the internal card to get rid of any unnecessary bulges to my laptop.

Do you think this may be an issue with my antennas? I do not see the wireless light turn on in the front and the switch is on. Problem? Bios Update Maybe?

I have the white antenna cable in the Main and the black one in the AUX.
Please help me if you have any advice.

I think it’s possible that your new wireless card is not compatible with the laptop. I just checked the laptop specifications and didn’t find any internal wireless card listed for this model. Check out this website, it has an article that might help you to work around the problem you have with internal wireless card on Satellite 1905-S303 notebook.

I needed some help on my Toshiba Tecra 9100 notebook. I have three issues that may be related:
1. Sound card is not detected by laptop
2. Wi-Fi card not detected by laptop
3. Modem is listed but not usable – laptop reports that it is used by another software
I have used the rescue CDs that came with the computer to restore the laptop to new condition and I even downloaded the latest drivers for audio from the Toshiba support website. The driver did not install.
I installed a BIOS update months before these problems happened. And these three problems happened at almost the same time
I opened the laptop following your procedure (thanks, by the way) to check for loose connections but everything seemed okay.
The computer still works but there is no sound, modem nor wi-fi. And I can still connect to the internet via LAN cable…but it really sucks that I can’t listen to music or use the modem for dial-up connections.
What could be the problem? Please help me.

All three modules – the sound board, the wireless card and the modem connect to the I/O board and I think that’s your problem. Apparently the I/O board is bad. You can see the I/O board pictured on the step 17.