How to Install Drivers on a Machine with no Ethernet / Wireless Drivers Available
A friend’s Toshiba Satellite was plagued with virus. I tried downloading the AVG Anti-virus but it did not detect half of the virus and spyware and that good stuff – so I got fed up and installed Windows XP from scratch. Once it booted, I thought I would just go to Toshiba and download the drivers for the Toshiba A105 SP4501 – easy right?
Dead wrong. Apparently the Toshiba A105 SP4501 is a figment of my imagination, because Toshiba does not lists it anywhere, so here I was, with my friend’s laptop that had no wireless drivers, no ethernet drivers and I was quickly running out of patience.
I then remember that in Lifehacker I read about Drivermax Agent, something that apparently did miracles for drivers. It was about to do its magic and it needed to connect o the Internet – which I did not have because I had no drivers!
Whilst in frustration, I noticed the IEEE1394 port, which is always listed as a network adpater. So I did it without even thinking it – I plugged in the port to my Macbook’s firewire port, launched Internet sharing and did this:
I did an ipconfig /renew in Windows and the damn thing got an IP!!!! I then launched DriverMax and it did all of its magic. It quickly found my missing drivers, suggested the best one, downloaded and installed it for me (you want chips with that?).