Wireless
Participate in insightful discussions regarding issues related to Intel® Wireless Adapters and technologies
7368 Discussions

Drivers for Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Card?

SSyno
Novice
31,595 Views

Just put a new system together and installed an Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 in it. Used Windows 8 Pro. x64. I cannot find drivers for the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260.

Anyone know where I can get drivers for this card? I purchased the card from Provantage.

0 Kudos
1 Solution
Jose_H_Intel1
Employee
19,575 Views

Hello Synomenon,

The drivers will be released soon; this is because the product has not been officially released yet.

View solution in original post

0 Kudos
183 Replies
NV3
Beginner
1,744 Views

I can also verify that the Sager driver is working in a Dell that I have installed this card in. Shameful that Intel still hasn't released an official driver for this for Windows 7.

0 Kudos
MTrid
Beginner
1,744 Views

On the other hand, I'm unable to get the Sager driver to work on my Lenovo s205 E-450 laptop.

Well, the driver installs and seems to be ok, but I'm not able to associate to any network ("unable to connect" message), and the adapter sometimes requires disabling/re-enabling to actually scan for networks.

0 Kudos
DBoul1
Novice
1,739 Views

I finally decided to try the card with the drivers from Sager. What the hell, if it didn't work, I'd have to uninstall them. It was dangerous and I'd never normally think about doing it, but I've been tired of this. The drivers installed with no problem. It's working on windows 7. The card is not recognized as an Intel card, but I suspect Intel will release the official drivers some time soon. I also got WiDi working! WiDi wasn't installed on my laptop, but I managed to do the install myself. Then Intel released a driver update and WiDi broke. I haven't been able to get it working until now. I hate wires. Almost all the USB ports broke on my last laptop and I've killed too many HDMI cables. This technology is just working now--the way it should.

Now I get to see if this card stays connected as there have been reports that it'll just drop the connection.

I've lost a lot of faith in Intel products with the release of the card but not the drivers when they said it would work with Win7, Win8 and Linux. It's like buying a car with no engine and the car company telling you that it's the dealership's problem--take it back to the dealership and tell them that you didn't get an engine. This is a serious WTF moment!

wface
Beginner
1,739 Views

I've been using mine all day and no connection issues at all. My gut tells me that the cards (most anyway) are fine. It's that the drivers are nowhere near ready. It's my position that Intel should have delayed releasing these until they had thoroughly tested and working drivers. Or advanced beta drivers, at the very least. That's my take, anyway. Intel just wasn't ready and decided to dump the problem in someone else's lap.

0 Kudos
tvete
Valued Contributor II
1,739 Views

I think I'm having a driver issue with the Intel Dual Band

 

Wireless-N 7260. The driver version is 16.1.0.14 which is the only driver for

 

Windows 7 at the moment. Frequently, but not all the time, when I click on the

 

Windows 7 access point list, I get all of the 2.4 GHz band right away, but the

 

5 GHz band takes 5 - 10 seconds to appear on the list. Are you guys having this

 

problem? So far, no speed or drop issues with the 2.4 GHz band. My router is

 

only 2.4 GHz so I can't test the stability at 5 GHz.

See this link for the picture: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2853/9379658261_1a76c2dd97_o_d.jpg http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2853/9379658261_1a76c2dd97_o_d.jpg

0 Kudos
PShu1
Beginner
1,739 Views

I have seen this happen with my laptop, but have had no problems yet connecting at 5Ghz. Stability has been ok, too.

0 Kudos
tvete
Valued Contributor II
1,739 Views

 

Thanks for your response. It's my first ever dual band wireless adapter so I'm not sure if the situation only happens in my laptop. I guess there must be something prioritizing the 2.4 GHz band although the preferred band is set to "1. No Preference" on the advanced settings. My laptop used to have the broadcom 802.11b/g and recently our Internet plan was upgraded to 30 Mbps download plan, but I could never get the full speed due to the wireless G limitation. BTW, the router is N150 and with this Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 adapter, I get on average 72 - 144 Mbps (most stays at 130-144) plus the full internet speed. No drops ever occured yet with my connection from the router so I'm very satisfied with this adapter.
0 Kudos
wface
Beginner
1,739 Views

Since your router is 2.4 only, I assume you're using neighboring signals to gauge 5 GHz. Have you considered that they may be some distance away? It may simply be taking a bit to scan signals that are on the edge of your laptop's broadcast range.

Anyway, to answer your question. No, I haven't had this problem. However, I have occasionally seen it on 5 GHz with my ASUS USB-N53 wireless dongle.

0 Kudos
tvete
Valued Contributor II
1,739 Views

Yes, I'm looking at my neighbor's 5 GHz band. From what I read, the 5 GHz doesn't penetrate the walls as good as 2.4 GHz. Maybe there's the wall interference that leads to the adapter having a hard time picking up the 5 GHz band from my neighbors.

0 Kudos
wface
Beginner
1,739 Views

It's a series of radio waves. Radio is made up of photons*, At 5 GHz, the waves are closer together than 2.4 Like this ||||||| instead of like | | | | | | | Therefore there is more of a chance the photons will collide with atoms and stuff in a wall, scatter off, and result in a weaker, less stable signal. I read a bunch of geekspeak on how they supposedly found a way to counter the effect but it gets to a point where you simply can't argue with particle physics.

* Radio, Microwave, UV, Gamma, etc, all photons and it's all light at various "strengths". A very simplified way of looking at it.

0 Kudos
tvete
Valued Contributor II
1,759 Views

theveterans veteran wrote:

I think I'm having a driver issue with the Intel Dual Band

 

Wireless-N 7260. The driver version is 16.1.0.14 which is the only driver for

 

Windows 7 at the moment. Frequently, but not all the time, when I click on the

 

Windows 7 access point list, I get all of the 2.4 GHz band right away, but the

 

5 GHz band takes 5 - 10 seconds to appear on the list. Are you guys having this

 

problem? So far, no speed or drop issues with the 2.4 GHz band. My router is

 

only 2.4 GHz so I can't test the stability at 5 GHz.

See this link for the picture: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2853/9379658261_1a76c2dd97_o_d.jpg http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2853/9379658261_1a76c2dd97_o_d.jpg

Ever since I updated to 16.1.1.3, I haven't had this problem now. My connection is far more stable too at 2.4 GHz band despite 30 access points/routers in range. I'm sticking to this version for Windows 7 even if newer version comes unless I found problems with this one.

0 Kudos
JBurw
Beginner
1,759 Views

Question is, do you (or anyone) get good AC connections?

I have the 7260-AC card and a AC access point.

Anyone try these drivers and get an .11AC connection (not just an .11N connection)?

0 Kudos
DBoul1
Novice
1,759 Views

I have a great connection. I live in a multiunit building where everyone's router walks over everyone else's. My router is an Apple Airport AC. I was having problems with Bluetooth disconnects (not router related), but haven't seen that problem in a few days. I don't know if it's because new drivers fixed the problem or if I've just been lucky. I'm not happy with the delayed release of the drivers. Nor am I happy with the idea that Intel will sell this product to resellers, but bock at any idea that they should support it. I am, however, ecstatic that I don't have to plug in my laptop to run backups. Backups can now be run from any room in my home. Before it took hours using wifi. Now it's done in less than an hour sometimes without me noticing that the process has run.

0 Kudos
PShu1
Beginner
1,739 Views

Turned on my T510 (win7, 7260 w/sager driver--16.1.0.14) this morning and noticed a Bluetooth icon had appeared in the system tray. After my last post here it was nowhere to be seen. Checked the device manager (screenshot below) and there are entries under radios and network adapters. All are enabled and active. The corresponding drivers are all MS drivers.

Bluetooth checked out with my phone--which does not have drivers (thank you Samsung...) and I have wifi, too; both are now working at the same time. I haven't checked the BIOS, yet, but I haven't changed anything there either so I don't expect to see a Bluetooth entry.

The Intel Proset v3 Bluetooth drivers are installed, but win7 does makes no reference to them in the device properties.

I can't explain what is going on and wonder how long it will be before they disappear.

0 Kudos
wface
Beginner
1,739 Views

You get a Windows update?

Also, keep in mind that modern Windows versions can and occasionally do access and change BIOS settings. I think this started with Vista, if memory serves.

0 Kudos
PShu1
Beginner
1,739 Views

If there are any changes to the BIOS (I was not aware that windows could do this--are you sure?), I can't see them. There is still no entry for Bluetooth. All references to Bluetooth in win7, e.g. device manager, are generic MS; there is no entry for an INTEL Bluetooth card.

0 Kudos
wface
Beginner
1,739 Views

Oh yes, quite sure. Here's a link about 8 doing it. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-access-the-bios-on-a-windows-8-computer/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-access-the-bios-on-a-windows-8-computer/

That's more about userland than low level access but it illustrates my point. My understanding is that Windows can access the BIOS or UEFI/BIOS whenever it wants and change anything it likes.

There are numerous search hits on Vista 86'ing the BIOS with Windows updates.

0 Kudos
PShu1
Beginner
1,739 Views

As far as I know my T510 does not support UEFI and the BIOS must be accessed via legacy methods. I'm betting that my BIOS is unchanged. Interesting stuff, though; thanks for the heads up.

0 Kudos
ROwen2
New Contributor I
1,739 Views

Hello everyone. I have been using this adapter in my HP laptop for a couple of weeks with both Win 7 and Linux mainline kernels. I just thought I would report after my last few posts. The cards are still working with no noticeable issues.

Loving this card.

JBurw
Beginner
1,739 Views

August 3rd, still no Win7 drivers. Sad.

0 Kudos
JBurw
Beginner
1,686 Views

August 3rd, still no Win7 drivers. Sad.

0 Kudos
Reply