Trouble detecting network

I have an HP Pavilion running XP with Broadcom 802.11b/g wireless. About a week ago, it stopped detecting any wireless network. Other computers have been able to connect, so I know our (open) network is fine. In the Wireless Assistant, it says that the wireless device is disabled, although the control panel says it is enabled. Attempting to disable and re-enable through the control panel does not work.

This happened before, and I fixed it by deleting the connection from the control panel and setting it up again. It will not let me do that this time. Any ideas?

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Reply to
Mattiocwit
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Any particular model HP Pavilion? A laptop perhaps?

Yep. The committe of brilliant human interface designers came up with no less than 4 completely independent ways to disable the wireless. Equally amazing is how some of these will report that the wireless is enabled, but it's not. Since you committed the capital crime of not disclosing the model number, you would normally be sentenced to an evening of reading the manual. However, that's cruel (but not very unusual).

The possibilities (in order of most likely):

  1. There is a wireless button or on off switch somewhere on your laptop. For HP, it's usually a button dead center above the keyboard area, with a bright blue LED that's lit when the wireless is enabled. Sometimes, it's a slide switch on the front left of the laptop. It's there, somewhere.
  2. Windoze will allow you to enable or disable the wireless device. Go unto: Control Panel -> Network Find the wireless device. *RIGHT* click and see if it says "enable" or "disable" at the top of the list.
3 Many laptops come with "wireless managers" that take over running the wireless and sometimes the ethernet devices. I have no clue what comes with your unspecified model HP that might be a laptop. However, if you do happen to have something other than Windoze Wireless Zero Config running the wireless, check its settings for enable/disable.
  1. The BIOS sometimes has a wireless enable or disable setting.
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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