Purchased a Compaq with a Broad com adapter

Most older desktop motherboards are not set up with Wi-Fi capability, the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to add Wi-Fi to your desktop is to purchase a USB Wi-Fi adapter.

I've used the Panda Wi-Fi adapters (Available online, such as Amazon.com) or pretty much any computer store).

Examples:
Amazon com Panda 300Mbps Wireless USB Adapter Windows Vista 7 8 8 1 10...

Amazon com Panda Ultra 150Mbps Wireless USB Adapter Windows XP Vista 7 8 8...


An alternative would be to purchase a wireless NIC card to install into your Desktop PC. You would have to examine your PC to determine what form factor and technology to purchase that would be compatible with your motherboard and available expansion card slots.

You can get WI-FI anywhere WI-FI is available with a smart phone.
But if you only have a modem at home and an ethernet cable from the modem to your computer to get internet, then you may not have WI-FI at home.
You'll need to get a wireless router to have WI-FI at home.
Once you do that, you can continue to have your desktop hooked up by the ethernet cable, but you can also install a WI-FI adapter card in your desktop. It will have an antenna on the back of your computer and then you can set it up anywhere in your house and have internet without an ethernet cable.

Forget about pci cards. Get external USB wi-fi adapter, it is much cheaper

Hello,

it seems like your laptop not have inbuilt wi-fi connection, so you can not use the wi-fi but if you buy a USB wireless adapter or wi-fi pcmcia card so you can use the wi-fi in your laptop.

Thank you for using Fixya

Regards
Manish

no you cannot replace the built-in wi-fi card...
if you try to change the drivers for atheros wi-fi to Broadcam driver, your wi-fi card will not function anymore.... but you can always install another WI-FI card in your laptop... you can buy a USB Adapter or a Cardbus(PCMCIA) adapter for this purpose...if you want your wi-fi signal strenth and range to be higher, you can opt to buy an adapter which comes under N standard....N standard wi-fi adapters are capable of connecting at a speed of more than 300mbps(practically) to any N standard device like router....

If you know you installed the right driver and you know for sure that the device manager is showing no signs of the wireless card then the motherboard is probably bad.

To verify this, put another wireless card into the slot, if the system doesn't pick up on the 2nd card then that slot on the motherboard is bad meaning the motherboard would have to be replaced.

Hi,

This method will hard reset the wireless drivers back to default settings, but before you perform this remove power from the modem and router for 2 minutes reconnect power and wait another 2 minutes for them to settle down.

Go to your laptop, right click "computer" select "manage" and then "device manager", a list will populate, then click on the + sign next to "network adapters" and right click on the wireless adapter and "uninstall" the device, reboot the PC and wait for windows to detect the wireless card and install the drivers for it, this will appear in the system tray (bottom right hand side) when its done try to connect again.


Good luck

You will need to check that the router is on first, then go to the internet settings on your computer, if the wi-fi doesnt show up try and SCAN so your computer will look for it. When it is found you will need to give it a password and then its ready to go

You may find that the WiFi card needs new drivers. Some particular wifi adapters don't have XP drivers. Compaq are now owned by hewlett packard so go to www.hp.com and search for XP drivers for your wifi card there - luckily HP are very good for providing drivers for XP even on Vista-supplied systems.