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Resolved Question

Windows Phone Driver Missing - Windows 7 "N" Editon

by Dec 23, 2012 4:06AM PST

My company recently gave me an Windows 8 phone (Nokia Lumia 920). It's a great phone but when I plug it into my Windows 7 "N Edition" laptop it cannot find drivers for it. My wife's Vista laptop, however, does.

I've heard that downloading the Zune software should instal them, but Zune won't install because it can't find Media Player.

It would be great if I could just download the Windows Phone drivers from Microsoft, but for some reason that's just not possible.

Can anyone help?

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Steve309 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer
3 Posts
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by Dec 23, 2012 8:25PM PST

Turns out that Windows Update was hosed on my machine due to a virus a few months ago. I got that working and wouldn't you know it, "WinUSB" was one of the updates, which would have fixed my issue. For some unknown reason that update was the only one that failed to install. Could possibly still be an issue with Windows N. So anyway, today I'm reformatting and reimaging my machine with the regular version. For some reason my work gave me N at first.

Good riddance, and thanks for nothing EU! ; )

-Steve

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Virus? I rarely guess that.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Dec 23, 2012 10:39PM PST

The clues don't point me to that but given the version it did have a good reason to fail. Now that I've had a little longer to think about this version, I recall the person at the office that fixed it told me that there is a Microsoft issued WMP install to slip in the missing WMP. It's not perfect, not exactly the same but was enough to get our DVR player app to work again.
Bob

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Answer
Sounds right.
by Forum moderator Dec 23, 2012 4:13AM PST
http://windows.microsoft.com/is-IS/windows7/products/What-is-Windows-7-N-edition is not only missing what you know about but it removes components that depended on WMP. And you bet, WMP plays a role in the Phone Sync.

It's the same reason the Zune didn't install. I can't help because it's a choice folk made and here we like the software to just work and don't care for the politics. Some folk love to politic and for them you have them call the PC maker for the missing files or Microsoft.
Bob
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