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Intel 7260AC Vista Driver


Khenglish

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So my brother wanted his microwave to stop knocking out the internet to his desktop. His router is dual band, while the desktop is an old Vista machine with only wifi AG support. I figured I could solve this problem by just getting him a dual-band card for Christmas, and he could run in the 5GHz band.

 

So I got him a Gigabyte GC-WB867D-I v2, as people were saying it was plug and play and worked with Win10, while other adapters were not. This card will eventually be transferred to a new desktop, so Win10 compatibility was major.

 

It turns out for him it's not plug and play, because it refuses to run on Vista... despite vista being extremely similar to Win7. The Gigabyte card is actually just an mpci-e adapter with an intel 7260AC. I modded the driver .inf to include vista, and the driver installs if done through the device manager, but the card gets error 39.

 

I've been thinking that the driver can only be installed correctly if running the Intel Pro wireless installer. Because of vista though it is refusing to run at all. I've been trying to spoof the installer into thinking I have win7, but that's not working and it still sees vista.

 

Anyone have any ideas? This check for allowing win7 but not vista is ridiculous. Maybe there is some older driver version that has vista support? If so I can't find it. All download links I find that may have vista support (ie doesn't have the pointless check) are all dead.

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Seems obvious but why not just upgrade his system to Windows 7?  This way he gets a free upgrade to Windows 10 as well. The license should be transferable to his new desktop as long as he calls MS and tells them. 

 

Edit: Okay it seems that seller on Amazon is a bit shady, shame. He can alternatively join the MS insider program and get Windows 10 insider builds right now for free. A friend of mine did that and it's a legitimate path to an upgrade. It seems long term that might be less stressful than trying to find a work around for Vista.

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So far the friend I mentioned has been part of the insider program shortly after Win 10 launched and he keeps getting free updated builds. The only caveat is you cannot opt out of updates which doesn't seem like a bad deal to me.

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Worth checking if your desktop motherboard vendor released a SLIC 2.1 BIOS. In which case you can load Win7, load the OEM certificate and license and have an activated Win7.

 

Something that Dell/HP did with their notebooks as they transitioned from Vista to Win7. Maybe desktop manufacturers did too?

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