Hello there, I was trying to install some drivers on a Vista machine and have been banging my head against the keyboard for the last few hours and was wondering if any of you have had a similar problem with drivers because I can’t find anything online about this.
Anyway,
I was trying to install various “Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter” drivers, with versions ranging from 2007 to 2010, both form the manufacturer and specifically for this computer (a Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Mobile) and others from here:
All of them are for Windows Vista 32bit.
The computer had previous drivers installed and working, but also had a network problem. In the process of figuring out what was causing it, I tried to install newer drivers to see if that was the problem. It turns out the network problem was due to a different thing that is now fixed (some dependencies of the WLAN Configuration service were turned off), but I’m still stuck installing the new drivers.
TL;DR:
However, every time I install new drivers, after install, Windows says that “The device instance name is invalid”, regardless of what drivers I install. I even tried to install drivers for different hardware in that slot just to see what it told me and IT STILL gave me the same error. I also tried to uninstall the current driver, checking the box to delete the driver’s software, running CCleaner and then deleting “athr.sys” from the Windows/Drivers folder and “oem8.inf” from Windows/Inf as those files were referenced in the driver’s properties. The install still gives me the same error.
The fact that it gives me this error with any driver leads me to believe it’s Windows’ fault and not the driver’s.
Note: I am translating from the original in Portuguese. “The device instance name is invalid” is the closest/correct translation and seems about right with the info I find online regarding the english version of Vista and how it refers to devices. This and this also seems to confirm that, though it doesn’t help me. It may be that the text is actually different in english Vista but I also searched for driver instead of device or stuff like “The device instance name appears to be invalid” and can’t find anything either.
