Wireless functionality suddenly disappeared

When my wife shut down her Acer Aspire laptop this morning vista installed a couple of updates.Upon starting it up later in the day wireless was gone.

When I got home today I checked it out thinking maybe the router just needed a reset or Vista needed restarting however still no wireless.Upon closer inspection I realised the wireless adapter(Atheros 5007....) isnt listed in the device manager any more.As far as Vista is concerned it just does not exist.

I know there is nothing wrong with the adapter as I dual boot Linux and it works fine there.

Anyway I have tried a few restore points to no avail...anyone have any suggestions?

Oh, simple, go to the Acer website, find support for your PC and download and install the wireless adapter drivers. It should be good as new.

It happened with my HP once. But in my case, I had to install the drivers and reboot. But when I restarted the next time, they were gone again.

If this happens to you, quickly use system restore to go to an even earlier state, before things go upside down. For some reason, I couldn't and I had to give my laptop to the Service Center and have parts replaced.