Laptop and XP Pro Prob.

[Karnevil9]

I have a HP laptop computer that had Windows XP Home Edition installed on it and it ran fine for the past year. It is a 1.3 gig intel, with 240 mbs ram. I have a cable internet connection with a netgear wireless router. The laptop has the router installation with my desktop having the receiver. I just tried to upgrade to XP Pro. After installation I got an error message saying that Realtek family PCI ethernet NIC could not be found. Install drivers. I can't access the internet without this connection.
I did some searching here and found someone who had a simlilar problem and tried the fix suggested which was to go to Realtek and download new drivers. I used another ciomputer to download the driver, which appearently is a realtek8139 driver, if i remember correctly. There was a problem when I tried to open that, the winzip couldn't unzip it so that didn't work. I am going to try to download it to a zip drive this morning and open it within the zip drive floopy and then install it. If that doesn't work I was thinking of either wiping the XP pro off and trying to reinstall it or just wiping the XP pro off and going back to home edition, or going to full install instead of upgrade.

Probelm is I searched around and couldn't find an uninstall for the XP pro. Does anyone know how I do that? Is it OK to reinstall the XP over itself?

I would like to keep my present settings if I can because it's easier, but If I have to wipe the system clean it is no big deal.

Any suggestions or solutions I have overlooked? Sorry for the lenghty question, but I wanted to give as much information as I could.

[LocoCoyote]

WOW!
Reinstalling over an old install should cause no problems. You say that updating your NIC driver didn't work? That is uncommon. What is Device manager telling you?
If wiping the system (ie it doesn't have anything you need or want to keep) is OK, I recommend that you do that and reinstall Win XP Pro from scratch. I'll bet your problem goes away.

I have never been a big fan of upgraDE installs

[Karnevil9]

The last operating systems that I had delt with was Windows 98. I remember hearing somewhere that if you installed 98, and reinstalled 98 again it would cause problems. But if I remember, 98 had an uninstall also. I didn't know if XP had the same thing.

The driver wouldn't install, because there was a problem opening the zip file I downloaded to. If I was able to get it open and install, I don't know if the problem would be solved but the error message says there is no driver for that ethernet card.

Device manager shows it as having a problem. I disabled it to see what happened. No change. I enabled it and properties showed it as working properly with no conflicts. Then when I tried to access the internet it came back with the error message again and device manager showed it as having problems. (the yellow bubble with the red exclamation mark).

The disk drive was making more noise than usual when loading the disk. I am thinking that the disk drive may have had some problems and installed the disk improperly. Is that possible?

[yellohut]

when you unzip the drivers do you get an executable file or the .dll and .vxd files?
If you have a friend with a CD burner (or own one yourself) I would unzip the driver, and burn the files to a disk.
If it has the .dll and .vxd files, then go to device manager, open the network card's properties and select upgrade driver. When it asks for the directory click have disk and direct it to the CD drive.
Or, do the same as above, but use the CD that came with the computer (either XP Home or the recovery CD)

edit:
or go to device manager, select properties for the network card and click to install the driver..
what location does it point to before it tells you that the file can't be found and to insert the windows XP CD? (if that's the case at all)
changing that to c:\windows\system may help.
I have seen this before where the default directory points to

[Karnevil9]

Yellowhut, are you OK. The last message was (where the default directory points to..........?) :) What? what?

The first directory that it points to is D:/pnp/lan. If I click on the down arrow for other choices is gives a D:/ toshiba, and D: motorola. D: being the CD drive. I used to have a motorola internet cable connector box supplied by the cable company, then I bought my own toshiba box when I got tired of paying a rental fee on theirs. I think that is what those entires are reffering to.

The XP Home recovery CD is a three CD set and when I started to install that it displayed a warning that this would remove any previous copies and install new, effectively removing everything on the laptop. I will save that as the last resort, but first I want to see if I can get it to work without having to do that. I don't know which of the three CD's contain the drivers.

I will check to see what kind of file extension I get and post it here. After I try some of your suggestions and see what happens. Thanks.

[andyms18a]

try this link and download the second driver down winxp hct pass version 5.5 it worked for me its a setup file just dubble click to lanch and will auto install the drivers for you
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloads1-3.aspx?series=16&Software=True

[Karnevil9]

I've already downloaded that one. That was the one that I couldn't open from the zip file. I did what Yellowhut suggested and burned it to CD. I haven't tried it yet because I am presently trying once more to install the upgrade to see what happens. It won't work though because during the set up process it already told me that I need that file.

[Karnevil9]

Does anyone know what a \\.\DRI_KBfiltr file is?

[andyms18a]

the file you downloaded shod not be a .zip but a .exe try renaming the file to realtec.exe and dubble click it
you may have to open a folder go to tools folder options and vew and remove the tick from hide systom and read only files and hide extensions to known file types to enable you to rename the file

[Karnevil9]

I want to thank everyone here for their help. After that last error message came up I thought this is rediculous. I decidied to just try a full install, even if I lost the present settings, as LocoCoyote suggested, to see if that worked. It installed flawlessly and everything worked fine afterwards. All previous error meassages were gone and the internet came right up. I can put my settings and icons back on as I need them. Again Thank you:) No more upgrades for me.