So we had an issue with the laptop a while ago, needing a full rebuild. Successfully backed up all of our files to a stand alone hard drive.
Reinstalled MS Windows Pro 7 from a new disk. All seems okay.
I have an MS Office account so can download from the web.
…but can’t access WWW
Muppet!

So, contacted our ISP to request wireless reinstalation disk, they advise that they don’t offer them any more but I can order a dongle (for £40).
Decided I should try ‘wired’ straight in to the router…but still have same issue “internet explorer cannot display the webpage”

What am I doing wrong?

Have a look in device manager to see if there are any network devices showing for the LAN and WLAN.
They may appear as unknown devices in which case you’ll need the mnufacturers drivers for the LAN and WLAN chipsets.
If they’re showing correctly are they enabled?

Reboot the router and the PC, then try network diagnostics in Windows if it still doesn’t work.

Drivers?

Any exclamation marks on your network card in device manager?

Hmmm…

Exclamation Marks on Other Devices:
-Ethernet Controller
-Network Controller
-PCI Simple Communication Controller
-SM Bus Controller
-USB Controller

You need the drivers for the laptop, go to the manufacturers site, find the support section and download the drivers. If you can’t then you are off to google the wireless chip and get a driver

something like “[laptop brand] [laptop model] wireless driver”

Sorry Mike am I being thick? How would I access the manufacturers site if the laptop can’t access the web?

How are you posting here?

If you can’t get a USB to work etc. (It says USB Controllers missing drivers) then easiest way is to from another computer download all the drivers and burn them to a CD.
But first try plugging your phone in and see if it see’s it as a USB storage device then download the driver to your phone and copy it from there and run it

If your on your mobile download them to that, plug it into your laptop, transfer and install.

edit: I’m being thick tonight, you can’t transfer unless USB port is working.

On win7 I think USB 2 should work without a driver (probably) USB 3 doesn’t.

Try plugging your android phone into it and using Tethering on the phone to share the data signal over USB.

Works for me with WiFi>USB as well as 4G>USB.

Then go and download your drivers.

Okay, thanks will give that a go after work.

Might work, easy to try. You need the chipset driver I think for the ports etc to work correctly, longerm. It’s a bit odd if it doesn’t work out of the box, but it sounds like an easy fix – you just need access to the divers 😀

You need the drivers for the laptop, go to the manufacturers site, find the support section and download the drivers. If you can’t then you are off to google the wireless chip and get a driver

This is the solution – no other way around it. The manufacturer should have a download page where you can download and unzip all the drivers relating to your laptop.

As already said, you’ll need to do it on another machine, and maybe burn a CD containing all the files (providing both machines have an optical drive).

Networking drivers are very specific to hardware. You may find that there are multiple networking drivers for different networking devices that your machine may have had installed at the time it was built. Download them all!

That being said, in its most basic form, a simple USB stick with files on it should work without drivers on most machines using windows 7. Does a USB stick work ? You’ve not specifically said whether it does or doesn’t.

You need the chipset driver I think

… is the right answer. You need the chipset drivers in place before you start worrying about the others, or it’ll never work. Once that’s done you may or may not need additional drivers for the NIC etc, but sort the chipset first. Either the manufacturer’s web page or, in all likelihood, Intel’s for these.