Computer's wireless connection stops working until reboot

Question

One of my coworkers asked me to help her with the internet connection on her computer. She is running Vista on a pretty old laptop, but it's still functional.

The problem is the following:
Every once in a while, her internet connection will disappear, and will not come back until she reboots the computer.
I tried troubleshooting, disabling and enabling her connection, but this just made all of the wireless networks in range disappear.

Since I did not have long with her computer, I did not try releasing and renewing ipconfig, though next time it happens I'll tell her to let me know.

I was wondering if anyone had had this happen before, and had fixed it.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

This is usually caused by a driver/firmware bug or failing hardware. Did you make sure she was running the latest driver for her wireless card?

Brand new USB wireless adaptors can be bought for well under $20, meaning you can probably get used ones for next to nothing. At those prices, it might not hurt to try a different crappy wireless adaptor and hope it happens to be less crappy than the one she's already got.