Wireless network connection dropped XP

I have a desktop PC with a Buffalo wireless G54 card. All was working
fine until Wednesday when the message "cannot connect to the wireless
network" appeared (there's a little red cross over the wireless icon).
I haven't changed any of the settings on the PC or router, & my
notebook still connects without a problem. I tried re-booting the
system & releasing/renewing the IP address of the desktop.

When I view a list of available wireless networks I can see my router,
but the PC refuses to connect to it. I have checked my WEP passkey &
it's correct (I even tried it with the passkey disabled on the
router). Is my card dead?

Regards
Gary

 

Since this happened the day after "second Tuesday" I was wondering if you
installed any Microsoft updates on the system -- especially device drivers?
Absent any kind of deliberate change in configuration on your part that's
about the only thing I can think of that might cause this issue. If you are
seeing your wireless router and if you are getting an indication of the
measured signal strength, then I think your card is not dead.

 

Thanks for your reply. It's possible that an update was installed on
the previous shutdown, although I can't remember, I'll have to check.
The problem is, for some reason my system restore has decided that it
doesn't want to restore any more. I guess there's no way round it. I
have tried reinstalling the driver for the card but keep getting the
typical windows error that it can't install the software for the card
because it's not configured properly, even though nothing's changed!

 

It's not a good sign that System Restore isn't functional. Do you see
anything in the Event Viewer over the past couple of days that might give us
a clue as to error conditions that might exist on your system? Also, did you
try just removing the card from Device Manager and then rebooting to get the
card detected again? You don't really have much to lose by trying that at
this point.