Dell Latitude on board modem & NIC

A friend recently acquired nine Dell Latitude C500/C600/C610 laptops. All are running WinXP Home SP1, and they all have built in modems and NICs. But only 2 of the laptops have the modem and NIC listed in the device manager. The others don't list either one at all; no question marks, no red 'X', nada. All the laptops are pretty much identical, and I went thru the BIOS on the 2 with the modem and NIC working, and compared the BIOS settings to the others, and the BIOS settings are identical. Is there maybe a hardware 'switch' that will enable the on board NIC and modem??? Is there something I'm overlooking? I ran the New Hardware Wizard and that didn't do anything. Any help, ideas, or suggestions will be appreciated! THANX!

hd2k

 

Try a driver scanner on-line- I use www.driveragent.com
It might pick them up, and you can then get a driver from your favourite site.
Otherwise, I suggest you remove them, an the replace them one at a time to see if Windows finds them (I know its not so easy with laptops, but basically its only a matter of finding the screws if you have to go inside.)

 

You have to have the motherboard interface controller drivers loaded before the NICs with those Dells.

Don't have any of that series to hand so I can't give you the chips nos, but if you use device manager in list by device mode and compare the working ones with the others you should be able to spot any missing.

Check also that the original owners haven't custom removed the comms components from windows itself.