Cisco turns thousands of Linksys users’ gear into bricks
July 26, 2010
I’m in the middle of upgrading our computers at work to Windows 7, which, by the way, is an impressive operating system and a very quick upgrade. Although you can’t upgrade directly from Windows XP (you have to reformat and start afresh), the process still takes less than half an hour. For the most part, all your hardware works. It’s just a beautiful process!

- Linksys wireless gear or paperweight? By taking drivers offline, Cisco has made bricks out of lots of expensive equipment.
BUT, there was one thorn in my side during all this — the Linksys wireless adaptors some of our computers use. We’re upgrading all our computers to the 64-bit version of Windows 7, and that requires a special driver. Linksys published this driver years ago, but I could no longer find it on their Website. Other sites linked to the page on their Website where it should have been, but it just wasn’t there anymore. This is how the six-hour nightmare began.
I searched Google for the driver. I searched forums. I searched everywhere I knew to look. I read about complicated workarounds. Some people said you should use alternate drivers by other manufacturers. But no real Linksys driver… until I finally came upon ONE user who happened to have saved the driver file before Linksys removed it from their site. With this one file, I was able to install the wireless adaptor in less than five minutes and get the computer online easily. Here it is, for those looking for it:
My question is: Why did Linksys not make this file available online themselves? (The latest driver listed on their Website was from 2002 and for WinXP only.) I can only guess that it has to do with the fact that they’re now part of Cisco. In the effort to rebrand, the linksys.com site redirects to the cisco.com site. Some of the content must not have made the switch. An innocent enough mistake… other than the fact that I have hundreds of dollars of Linksys gear that should not be obsolete, and they’re now paperweights, thanks to Cisco’s mismanagement of their driver database. The drivers exist to make these adaptors work with Win7, but Cisco just hasn’t put them online.
Maybe they want you to buy even newer gear??? Well, not me! If that’s how they manage their driver database, I can only imagine that gear I buy today might become unnecessarily obsolete in just a few years too. No thanks, Cisco. I’m off to find a different brand of wireless technology to use. Users shouldn’t have to rely on other users who happen to have saved driver files before they were ripped offline by the manufacturer.
And for anyone out there who’s been luckier than me, I’m still looking for a x64 driver for several other pieces of Linksys gear. Until I find them, I’ve got some really nice blue paperweights on my desk.
Photo courtesy: azn_racer_fan
I guess it’s not Apple’s fault that the WiFi was so bad. Or was it? Weren’t they smart enough to have two distinct networks — one for use by presenters and one for use by the pool of reporters? And why should they be using WiFi at all? Looking up the New York Times is something you should be able to do on 3G.








