Need Help Identifying WiFi Card In Acer Aspire V Nitro VN7-792G-79LX

I just received a few days ago an Acer Aspire V Nitro VN7-792G-79LX that I recently purchased. I'm not thrilled with Windows 10, so I installed Windows 7 x64 on it, instead. I only had a chance, before I had to leave for work (I drive a tractor-trailer for a living, and I'm currently on the road), to find Windows 7 drivers for the Realtek network card in it, and I need now to find Windows 7 x64 drivers for the WiFi card. I need help identifying the make and model number of the WiFi card my laptop has, because when I go to Acer's website and enter my serial number, then search for drivers, it lists drivers for 4 or 5 different WiFi cards, and 2 different Bluetooth drivers.

I'm pretty sure my V17 Nitro has a Qualcomm Atheros WiFi card, and I found information on another (non Acer) website that claims the model number of my Qualcomm Atheros WiFi card is NFA344.

Can anyone verify that is correct?

Thank you!

Accepted answers

IronFly

yes, sometimes Legacy setting can arise hardware/drivers problem.

about ACPI\MSFT0101 try this:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/it/download/23091/Intel-ME-9-Driver-Management-Engine-1-5-MB-di-Intel-NUC

about IUSB3\ROOT_HUB30&VID_8086&PID_A12F&REV_0031&SID_103B1025 try this:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/21129/USB-3-0-Driver-Intel-USB-3-0-eXtensible-Host-Controller-Driver-for-Intel-7-Series-C216-Chipset-Family

about PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A170&SUBSYS_103B1025&REV_31

it's Intel(R) Smart Sound Technology but i can't find any driver for windows 7

All comments

IronFly

open Device manager, if your wifi card needs a driver, it will be listed with an exclamation mark, double click it, click on Details tab, select hardareID on the drop down menu, copy and paste the first string here.

dmw_4814

O.K., thanks, I'll try that as soon as I get back home (which probably won't be until Wed night or Thurs morning)..

I'm pretty sure it's going to show that it needs a driver, as it's not detecting any wireless networks at all (unless the WiFi is just turned off).

I didn't even have an Internet connection with an Ethernet cable connected to my wireless router, until I downloaded drivers for the Realtek NIC & installed them (fortunately, I still have my old laptop, an HP, and I used that to download the drivers and burn them to a CD).

dmw_4814

O.K., I did some digging/searching, and I got my Wi-Fi card working, along with a few other things that had exclamation marks in Device Manager. However, I still have three items listed with exclamation points; one is my sound card, I'm assuming, as I have no sound & a red X on the speaker in the Taskbar. Here's the info for my non-working devices (they have no drivers installed):

Multimedia Audio Controller:

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A170&SUBSYS_103B1025&REV_31

Unknown Device:

ACPI\MSFT0101

Unknown Device:

IUSB3\ROOT_HUB30&VID_8086&PID_A12F&REV_0031&SID_103B1025

Any help identifying these devices/locating Windows 7 x64 drivers would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

IronFly

they are all Intel's device, so try to run Intel drivers update software and download the suggested drivers:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24345/Intel-Driver-Update-Utility

dmw_4814

Yeah, I tried running the Intel Driver Update Utility (that was actually the first thing I tried when I came home from being on the road, yesterday) - no joy. It tells me "No drivers were detected for your product". The way I got some of my non-working hardware to work was to search for driver updates using DriverMax, but it now tells me that all my drivers are up to date.

I tried installing the RealTek audio driver listed for my laptop on Acer's download page, and it seemed to install O.K. (even though it's supposed to be for Win10; there's a folder inside the download for Vista64, or something, so I thought it might work for Win 7 x64).

Dennis

IronFly

so what do you miss right now?

dmw_4814

The problem I'm having are those three hardware devices I listed yesterday (or, this morning, maybe) that have the yellow triangles with the exclamation points by them: Multimedia Audio Controller, and (2) Unkown devices. I have no sound, and none of my USB ports seem to be working. I have a SanDisk 64GB USB flash drive that, no matter what USB port I put it in, Windows 7 isn't recognizing that it's plugged in to the laptop. So, I'm assuming nothing else I would plug in to any USB ports would also be recognized.

I'm at a loss as to what to do, now. I've tried Windows Update; DriverMax; Intel Update Utility; I've even tried uninstalling those three devices, rebooting, and then letting Windows try to reinstall drivers for them - all to no avail.

This problem couldn't be related, in any way, to the fact I have my BIOS set to "Legacy", instead of "UEFI", could it? I thought I read somewhere that, in order to install Windows 7 and be able to get it to boot up, you needed to change the BIOS to "Legacy". I could be totally wrong, there, I don't know. Just grasping at straws, here.

Dennis

IronFly

yes, sometimes Legacy setting can arise hardware/drivers problem.

about ACPI\MSFT0101 try this:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/it/download/23091/Intel-ME-9-Driver-Management-Engine-1-5-MB-di-Intel-NUC

about IUSB3\ROOT_HUB30&VID_8086&PID_A12F&REV_0031&SID_103B1025 try this:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/21129/USB-3-0-Driver-Intel-USB-3-0-eXtensible-Host-Controller-Driver-for-Intel-7-Series-C216-Chipset-Family

about PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A170&SUBSYS_103B1025&REV_31

it's Intel(R) Smart Sound Technology but i can't find any driver for windows 7

dmw_4814

Thanks; I'll try your suggestions as soon as I get home (I drive a tractor-trailer for a living; I'm in NM, but headed home to Phoenix, right now).

I did some more digging around online, and I discovered the unknown device with the hardware ID "ACPI/MSFT0101" is actually related to an Intel hardware -based security feature known as TPM, which has been enabled since Windows 8 and up. As far as I'm aware, there's no driver available for Windows 7, and the only way to get rid of that unknown device (for OCD people, like myself!) is to see if there's a setting in the BIOS to disable it. I'll have to check on that when I get home, too.

dmw_4814

By the way, what does NUC stand for? Is that the type of board in my Acer laptop?

Also, what would changing the setting in the BIOS from "Legacy" back to "UEFI" do? Would my Windows 7 installation still boot?

FYI - I'm planning on the next few weeks to replace the Toshiba mechanical HDD with a Samsung 1 or 2TB SSD (I want the 2TB SSD, but I'm not sure I can swing the almost $700 it currently sells for on Newegg!), as well as buying the Samsung 950 Pro 512GB M.2 2280 PCI-Express SSD drive. I want to hopefully use the M.2 SSD add my boot drive, and don't want to mess up any settings in the BIOS that would prevent me from doing that.

dmw_4814

"AS my boot drive..."!

Stupid "autocorrect".

IronFly

UEFI vs Legacy:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-UEFI-and-Legacy-Mode-which-we-need-to-choose-while-installing-the-OS

NUC is an Intel platform (motherboard), it's not the same as yours but can share drivers.

Honestly i would always prefer UEFI instead of Legacy since there can be some hardware/drivers issues, on some laptop this will appear as corrupted graphic, bad touchpads or some drivers that can't be installed.

Windows 10 is also faster, more reliable (more updates in the future) and has a better resource use.

about your SSDs switch, you can do it.

dmw_4814

O.K., so in the 10 hours or so I got to spend at home on Sunday (part of which I had to sleep some), I was able to get my USB ports working. That USB controller package you linked to on the Intel website wasn't actually the correct (for my platform) one, but the correct package was on that same page. I had actually already installed that package, but I was able to get them working by saving it to my HDD, then manually updating the driver and navigating to the download I had saved.

However, I think I'm going to have to give up my attempt to install Windows 7 on this laptop, as I, just like you, am just not able to find any driver to get the Intel Smart Sound Technology working in Windows 7,so i don't think I'm going to be able to get my sound working.

I'm either going to have to put Windows 10 back on, and see if I can customize it enough to my liking (what I do with Windows 7 is go into the registry and edit the values for over 300 or so different fonts, so that every, single font in every, single program; app, or Web page displays in - don't laugh - Comic Sans MS. I'm a very visually stimulated person, and I just like the way that font looks on my computer, but when I try that in Windows 10, it gets stuck in a boot loop). I found some different methods of hopefully accomplishing what I want to do with Windows 10 on the Internet that I haven't yet tried, so maybe I can achieve my desired results that way.

If not, I'm going to have to return the laptop to Newegg, and buy a different one. I found an HP Envy 17t notebook (which is actually what I was going to buy before I discovered this Acer laptop) on Amazon with the same Intel Skylake processor, but it comes with Windows 7 pre-installed. I'll buy that, if I return this unit.

Thanks for all your help!