Vista - vista wireless capability gets randomly disabled

Hi Guys, some of you might recognize me from the windows 7 forums, this is my first post here. I have never used vista except to help my friends so I am not very familiar with it, but it's very close to the windows 7 interface so it's not that hard to learn.

My friend has Vista and has a problem with her wireless. she has a lenovo R61i Laptop. the router is linksys WRT54GC. randomly the wireless capability gets disabled even though the physical switch is not changed ( is always on ), this happens usually when the PC is restarted or when the router is restarted. sometimes we restart the PC or the router but it doesn't occur, so I cannot re-create the problem easily. I googled a bit and saw some people suggesting this could be because the wireless service is not set to automatic, so I checked services and the only service that seems to have to do with the wireless is the WLAN service, and it is set to automatic and started. all we have to do is just do diagnose and vista will say that the solution to the problem is found , which is to enable the wireless capability, so I click on that and it will enable wireless and everything will work. but for my friend is it confusing as she thinks there is a problem with her internet connection or her router, I told her it is a simple bug with vista ( I think ) and I will look for a solution.

So What else can I check? we had limited time today but tomorerow I will try more things, maybe I will try an update for the wireless driver. btw it is an intel built-in wirless. I thought I would ask if any of you have run into an issue like this and what did you do to reslove it. sounds to me like a bug with vista as I said but not really sure...

Windows Update is turned on, so I asume the latest updates for vista are installed but i did not check if SP1 is installed or not.

If the encryption is WEP, try WPA or better yet WPA2. I've read that WEP has been known to cause intermittent connection problems with some setups.

Sky

thank you skyzoomer for this idea, I will check today to see what type of encruption is used, and if it's set to WEP i'll try WPA or WPA2. strange i use WEP at home but never had any issues, but I don't use Vista at home... I'll let you know how it goes!

Hi akramh,

I've also read that WEP is very easy to crack using free software that's available on the web. Might be worth it to switch to WPA2 at your home too. Too many bad people around these days.

Sky

Tried WPA but is not working with my mobile, that's why I use WEP. anyway went to my friends today she said the wirless is not working again, this time diagnose could not resolve the issue, so I had to connect via a wired connection, which seemed to work fine. then I restarted the laptop and it worked... now I decided to try your method, so I changed the ecryption on the router to WPA2 Personal ( I think enterprise is best for Office or large environment right?), and also updated the driver on the laptop to the latest version , I cannot recall the Adaptor Model now but it's an Intel Wifi, I downloaded the latest driver from intel site version 12.x ( the old version on the laptop was 11.11.x ), and for now it is working. tried to restart the router and Laptop few times and there is no connection problems so far. told her to let me know if the problem appears again or not.

thanks for all your help skyzoomer...

EDIT: akramh said: now I decided to try your method, so I changed the ecryption on the router to WPA2 Personal ( I think enterprise is best for Office or large environment right?)

Missed this question before. I'm not sure about the enterprise version. I'm using WPA2 Personal and it's working great for me.

My fingers are crossed...
Sky