I have a Dell Inspiron 1420 which I rebuilt about 3 months ago from Vista Home Premium 32-bit to Win7 Ultimate 64-bit. The onboard wireless card is an Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG, and after the rebuild it picked up the Win7 drivers and ran like a clock until last Tuesday. We also recently upgraded our network, and last Tuesday I received, and tried to install, a TrendNet TEW-642EC N-class wireless card. I spent 2 days trying to get the TrendNet card to work, and finally concluded that it was defective and returned it for a refund. However, in the course of installing its drivers, and uninstalling, and reinstalling, somehow the Intel card lost its ability to connect to, or even to detect and display, a broadcasting wireless network. I've been working on this for a week now. The wireless card shows as "working properly" in the device manager; it shows as "enabled" in the Network & Sharing Center; but "Connect to" and "Manage Wireless Networks" bring up a blank screen. I know there are at least 6 broadcasting networks on my block. The lights are on but nobody's home. I've made multiple tries at system restores - it always fails because a file is in use. (I may have to uninstall my ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite and try again. ZA has a reputation.) Uninstalling it in Device Manager and reinstalling it doesn't help. Searching for new drivers says I have the current drivers. I started researching in the Event Logs and found the log for WLAN Auto-config. Until I started messing with the TrendNet and its utility software, connection attempts showed this entry: <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } PRE { margin-bottom: 0.08in; color: #0000ff } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> Wireless security succeeded. Network Adapter: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection Interface GUID: {d24c1389-6b10-45e0-b09f-277eab1b6643} Local MAC Address: 00:1B:77:C4:DB:75 Network SSID: ringivy86 BSS Type: Infrastructure Peer MAC Address: 00:1C:F0:57:67:F5 After a couple of uninstalls and reinstalls of the TrendNet "wireless utility client" and its drivers, at a time when I couldn't display any wireless networks to connect to, the WLAN Auto-config event log showed this entry: <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } PRE { margin-bottom: 0.08in; color: #0000ff } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> WLAN AutoConfig service has successfully disconnected from a wireless network. Network Adapter: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection Interface GUID: {d24c1389-6b10-45e0-b09f-277eab1b6643} Connection Mode: Automatic connection with a profile Profile Name: ringivy86 SSID: ringivy86 BSS Type: Infrastructure Reason: The network is disconnected by the driver. TrendNet swears (but they would) that "their software" wouldn't do anything to the system, and uninstalls cleanly. But if so, why the change? Also, the WLAN Auto-config has stopped logging - the last entry was <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->1/26/10 at 4:26:51 PM, which was the first day I tried to get the TrendNet card to work. Also, the netsh wlan show settings command now shows an error: <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } PRE { margin-bottom: 0.08in; color: #0000ff } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> Wireless LAN settings --------------------- Show blocked networks in visible network list: No Only use GP profiles on GP-configured networks: No Hosted network mode allowed in WLAN service: Yes Allow shared user credentials for network authentication: Yes Block period: Not Configured. Function WlanQueryInterface returns error 5023: The group or resource is not in the correct state to perform the requested opera tion. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's been like that all along. I have a Dell Solution Center contract with 3 calls left, so I called in one of my markers and spent 3 hours on the phone yesterday watching Dell support do all the things that have been failing me for a week. They're going to call me back tomorrow after researching it. One thing they did was download and install the 64-bit Intel drivers for the card. This allows me to use the Intel PRO/Set Wireless diagnostic tools on the Intel card, which produced these results: <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> Hardware test – failed. Driver version 12.4.1.4 doesn't support Intel PROSet/Wireless Software version 11.5.0.0. Driver test – passed. Driver is loaded. Netw5v64 Version: 12.4.1.4 Radio test – failed. Failure getting network radio status. Scan test – failed. Failure getting network scan status. Association test – failed. Not associated. Authentication test – failed. Not authenticated. Signal Test – failed. Signal Quality: Failure getting signal status. Ping test – failed. Failure getting ping status. Now, the diagnostics imply that the Intel card is dead (I love it that the driver they downloaded says it isn't supported); and it's possible that it did choose to die on the day I tried to install a new card which happened to be defective, but I'd have to swallow hard to believe that. Here's my concern: did the TrendNet drivers or utility software make changes to my WLAN Auto-config settings which prevent any other card from detecting broadcasting wireless networks? And if they did, how do I find out, and can I reverse the changes without reinstalling Win7? Why did WLAN Auto-config quit logging events on 1/26? If all I need to do is buy a new wireless card, that's fine - but if the O/S is hosed up in some way, buying a new wireless card may not help. I have very little confidence in Dell support's ability even to address this issue.

I have wireless again. I didn't "solve" this in the normal sense. I still don't know what was wrong, or what I needed to do to WLAN Auto-config to fix it. But I do know that something was wrong with WLAN Auto-config. I ran query commands against it while I was down, and again after it was working again; the answers don't look anything alike. And it stopped logging events to its operational log at exactly the time the problem started. I got the system restore to work. It took me over a week of research. It kept failing with "file in use." I tried turning off all the startup loads. I shut down ZoneAlarm. I told ZoneAlarm not to load on startup and then shut it down. Still failed. I finally found a site where someone suggested that it might be necessary actually to uninstall ZoneAlarm to avoid interference with system restore - unfortunately I didn't note the link, just the suggestion - and that was it. With all the startup loads disabled, and ZoneAlarm uninstalled, I ran system restore and it worked. And my wireless card began picking up signals again.