Dell D600 - Mystery PCI/PMCIA Device Keeps On Popping up

Hey guys,

I am helping out my friend. She has the Dell Latitude D600, the same as mine. (Whisper - Don't tell...but she little reckless w/ it, some of the paint has peels off.)

Anyway, she told me that her D600 was acting up, she said that Windows kept on asking her to install a driver for the unknown device. I took a look at the device manager, there was two unknown devices, PCI device and PCMCIA device. Sometimes, when I booted the computer, when the Windows almost done finishing loading up, BOOM, BSOD, and then rebooted itself. Thankfully, she has another laptop, newer one and have her backup stuffs. So I went ahead do to a fresh clean install of XP. The installation procedure went A Ok. However, when I finished installing all of the drivers, it happen again, it ask for a driver, and BSOD (sometimes, not all of the time). Whats funny is that when I lucky got boot it up successfully, I looked at the taskbar, the wireless link icon was missing. So I thought to myself, what if it is the wireless driver is causing the problem. So I did another fresh clean install of XP and install drivers EXCEPT for the wireless card. So far, no asking for drivers and no BSOD.

Is that her wireless card becoming faulty???

TIA

JC

 

Look at the PCI Device ID in device manager for the unknown devices: right click on device, properties, details tab, Device Instance Id from dropdown. You want the VEN and DEV, eg, my conexant v92 modem is VEN_8086&DEV_24C6. Plug it into google, or www.pcidatabase.com to find out the device. Then locate the manufacturer for drivers. If you think/find out its the wireless, then try to find different drivers, direct from the OEM (most likely intel), or older/newer versions than what you have currently from dell.

 

Hmmm interesting thought. I just check the parts # of her laptop's service tag. Originally, it didn't came w/ internal wireless. So you might be right. I will have to check it tonight. Thank you for your help.

JC