I have had the same wireless network setup for years (3 Linksys routers, two of which are configured as APs). All of a sudden, one of my notebooks (Win 7, 64 bit) can no longer connect. All my other machines (several notebooks of different types and makes) still connect just fine.
Symptoms:
- After boot, network no longer auto connects.
- In the network connections, the network still sometimes (very infrequently) appears in the network list, but when trying to mouse to it to connect the network disappears from the list.
What I have already tried:
- moved the boot disk to a different machine (same hardware, both Dell Lattitude D830, Intel 3495ABG). Same problem, so does not seem hardware related.
- System restore to day before (when things worked fine) as there were some Windows updates (0ct 27 2010), problem remains
- removed network from wireless network list, problem stays
- manually re-added network, did not solve problem
- remove wireless device through device manager. Shows up again after reboot, same problem
- Disable IPV6 on the adapter, no change.
- install new driver (from Intel site), problem remains
- reset IP & winsock through netsh, problem remains
- clear out all network cache entries from registry, no difference
Anything else I could try before throwing in the towel and reinstalling?
EDIT: Interesting. When I am connected to the wired network by an Ethernet cable (different network adapter, by Broadcomm), the wireless network does show up and I can even connect to it and stay connected even when I remove the wired network cable and roam the house from AP to AP. However, when I start up not connected by wired cable, the wireless problem is still as described above.
UPDATE I can get the networks to show up by restarting the WLAN Autoconfig service, then disabling and re-enabling the adapter. Unfortunately the machine tends to lose the network again after a while (can be minutes to hours).
UPDATE The issue seems to have disappeared as mysteriously as when it appeared. Getting a new machine shortly, so I will drop the case for now unless new info turns up.