Solved Broadcom Default Driver Has Issues

Just rolled my default wireless broadcom 5.100.245.20 driver to dell-supplied "DW1520 wireless-n wlan half mini card", version 5.100.235.12. I have periodically had times after waking my computer up from sleep where it wouldn't connect to any wireless networks. I would either have to reboot, or I would go through the pretty pointless win8 networking troubleshooter. It would usually find something to fix as an administrator--I don't remember right now what it would say, probably similar to the old "repair" feature in XP. Then at other times windows 8 would tell me that my wireless driver was bad and that I should look for an updated one; there isn't one. Today I got stuck at a wifi network where it wouldn't connect (because of compatibility issues). No one else was having issues with this network. I turned my phone to tether and decided to look at this driver issue closer. I downloaded the driver for my laptop, from dell's site, for windows 7, but it would fail to install, giving me the fatal error: Error "Setup.rul 60" has occured and Setup cannot continue. I then had the installer extract the files to a directory of my choosing. I then turned the compatibility mode on to Windows 7 for the Setup.exe file in that directory. Surprisingly it then successfully installed the older driver. I could then connect to this other network. I'm hoping this will also take care of the other issues I've faced. From what I've read on the internet, other people have been having problems with that default broadcom driver on windows 8. Many people seemed to have issues with slow speeds; I never did, but just had connection problems and compatibility to some wireless networks.

This is more of a what-I-did-to-fix-this-issue post, but am curious if anyone else is having similar issues...

Thanks!

Did you check the Broadcom site for a Windows 8 driver?

Because I couldn't find one for my wireless card; a DW1520. It's probably a broadcom under the hood, but with a page like this, it's not easy to identify which driver might possibly work. I found another post by someone on a dell forum that recommended this. I haven't installed it yet to determine if it's newer or older--is there a way to check the driver version number by the .inf or .cat files? I couldn't see that information in the properties of the files.

What is the name that shows in Device Manger for your Wireless device?

If I have the authentic dell driver installed (as specified by Dell per my service tag), it is listed as "DW1520 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Card". If I have the broadcom driver installed, it just has a generic description like "Broadcom Wireless Adapter"--something along those lines.

I opened up the back of my laptop to see if I could see some other markings or model numbers. Without actually removing the wireless card, all I could see was DW1520, among serial numbers and mac address.

Okay, thanks. Doesn't look like there is anything you can do.

Laptop wireless cards are cheap and easy to replace, so that's one route you could think about if necessary. Just have to find one with Win 8 support.