WPA on ORiNOCO Mini PCI Card

Contributor Icon Contributed by davak Date Icon March 15, 2007  
Tag Icon Tagged: Windows

Many laptop makers have not updated their drivers to support WPA. By installing the correct drivers manually, many older laptops can get access to the wonders of WPA anyway.


Frequently I have heard people say that WPA is not available to them in XP. I never understood why until I started playing with my old laptop again.

The wireless network device drivers must support WPA for the windows OS to give it as an option.

If you own one of the many laptops with the wireless ORiNOCO chipset, this upgrade will allow you to use WPA.

You are installing unsupported drivers here. Install at your own risk and revert back to your old driver if this doesn’t work well for you.

1. Download the new drivers
2. Uncompress them to a folder on your desktop
3. Goto into the control panel
4. Select System
5. Under the hardware tab click the device manager button
6. Right-click on the ORiNOCO mini PCI Card under the network adapters
7. Select Update Drivers from the context menu
8. Select Install from list or specific location
9. Select Don’t Search. I will select the driver to install.
10. Click Have Disk
11. Navigate to the folder where you uncompressed your drivers
12. Select WLAGSALL.INF
13. Click Open and ignore warnings
14. When the drivers are completed. Reboot.

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  • Anonymous
    That link is dead, and this has apparently been abandoned by Sony and the card manufacturer (which apparently doesn't even exist anymore). Do you have the drivers stored on your computer?
  • Anonymous
    Oh I think I found a copy:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20070323125312/http:...

    We'll see if it works...
  • Anonymous
    Thanks to you both!

    I have a Gateway M500B1 laptop with the Agere ORiNOCO Mini PCI Card (wireless), and Windows XP Home Edition SP2. The laptop could connect only to an unsecured wireless network, and Windows wouldn't denote the WPA protocol on secured networks.

    After downloading the listed driver from the archive link (thanks, jbr!), and updating the driver per davak's instructions, Windows now denotes the WPA-secured networks correctly, and better yet -- I can establish a connection to a secured network.

    One note: With the updated driver, Windows falsely reports weaker signal strengths for all detected wireless networks. You have to dig into the status of the connected wireless network to get an accurate signal strength reading.

    Best regards! :P :P
  • majreboch
    Gentlemen,

    I also had a WEP card and I also tried to download a new driver. Kept going in circles until I happened to scroll DOWN and found all this info. It worked and I thank you very much. rle
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