Vista & Drivers :(?

Question

Hiya, Vista upgrade advisor says that my network card wont work with Vista. Last week i accidentally broken the internal network adapter in my laptop. (That one would work with Vista). The device it says will not work is a USB to ethernet network adapter. (Model: SMC 2206)

Is the advisor telling me rubbish?
If its telling the truth, what do i do to get it working?

Ant...

Answer 1

I looked up your device on the internet, and the only drivers I could find were dated from 1999 to 2004, and none were vista compatible. Unfortunately there are many issues with hardware and software support since the Vista program is still new. Keep in mind that even though Vista has been in development for years now, they have had many portions of Vista completely rewritten, which caused much the industry to not make any software or drivers until the actual release date.... So, as far as older hardware, like your usb device, the manufacturer has no drivers. You will need to purchase a new network adapter.
This must be a real pain, I hope all works out for you.

Answer 2

I cant help you with this networking card, as my laptop and desktop both have onboard ethernet.
Both my IBM R32 Thinkpad (approx. 5 years old) and my Dell GX-270 (3 years) took Vista onboard OK. The NIC in both got a generic driver, which windows update then upgraded for me.
Cant be sure if your third party card will "come to the party" for you (pun intended), but if you create an image of the pc you wish to install it on, then save this image to a partition other than on c: drive of your pc, you can install Vista, then if you cant get drivers, you just reinstall the image file and your back up as you are now, and can start to save for a newer pc.
You could also take solice in the fact Vista is NOT THAT GOOD, it is CERTAINLY not worth an expensive hardware upgrade.
Its XP with more pop-ups.
Im running Vista Ultimate and XP in a dual boot sysytem, and XP is on all the time, Vista gets a go when im bored, and no other time.
My scanners ( 6 different makes all failed to get a driver, so unless a driver can be found, it will stay covered up as a 15Gb file on a second partition, and not much more,this Vista also runs Office 2007 full enterprise edition, all 1715Mb of it !!! and Adobe Acrobat 8 ( 800Mb) hence the size.