Cannot disable wireless network adapter!

[Bill]

I have a six week old Dell Inspiron 9300 runing XP Pro SP2. It has both
an internal 100 mbs network card and an internal 802.11 a/b/g wireless
adapter. Most of the time I use the wireless adapter and have the wired
adapter disabled. Sometimes I disable the wireless adapter and enable
the wired adapter when I have to copy very large files. The last time I
did this was several weeks ago.

Now, when I right click the wireless adapter and choose Disable I get
an error message, "It is not possible to disable the connection at this
time. This connection may be using one or more protocols that do not
support Plug-and-Play, or it may have been initiated by another user or
the system account."

I have no idea what has changed to cause this. I can disable the
wireless adapter in Device Manager but that is a nuisance. How can I
fix this problem so I can once again disable the wireless adapter?

Thanks,

 

[Matt Gibson]

Isn't there a hardware switch on the laptop itself that you can use to shut
off the wireless adapter? I'd be suprised if there wasn't.

Matt Gibson - GSEC

 

[BigJim]

you may have to reinstall the drivers. BTW look on the hard drive for a
folder called , Drivers,
copy it to a cdr and save it put it in a safe place. These are the drivers
for your specific machine.
It makes it so easy to reinstall everything. The drivers are all unzipped.
Windows XP may not have
all of them, it has some of them. Like I upgraded to xp pro on my inspiron
1100, it didn't have the video drivers, so when xp was finished installing I
put the driver disk in the cd rom drive. I then went to device manager, open
the display adapters and told it to upgrade the drivers. Pointed it at the
driver disk and bang, the video was back.

 

[John Shaw]

Isn't there a hardware switch on the laptop itself that you can use to
shut off the wireless adapter? I'd be suprised if there wasn't.

Matt Gibson - GSEC

True, many provide a switch, some are software based through a seperate
utility -- I've encountered this issue with my home system but never had
the time or the inclination to troubleshoot as it's a USB adapter and
unplugging it is as easy as sitting up in my seat and reaching. I'd be
interested in a solution as well... but I recall being able to disable the
adapter at some point in time... perhaps a windows update or some other
software made a change or is preventing the ability to disable the wireless
adapter.

It seems in this case, since Bill can still disable his wired adapter, that
it is an issue specific to a wireless adapter, and it's a problem worth
solving since some laptops do not have a hard switch to disable it. I'd be
interested to know if there is a software utility that came with his laptop
that disables the adapter, and if in fact that works or not... or perhaps
this is grasping at straws... :\

 

[Lawrence A. Wong]

Assuming you have both an Ethernet port and a built in Wi-Fi adaptor of some
sort, under Network Connections, it will list the different ways your
computer can connect to the internet.

These are usually "Local Area Network" for a Wired connection and "Wireless
Network Connection" for a wireless connection. If you want to disable an
adaptor, just disable the respective connection. It disables the connection
by disabling the adaptor.

 

[Guest]

I am having he same issue on my Dell Inspiron. The only problem is that
the automatic network repair will not work since part of this process is
disabling the adaptor. Has anyone had any luck figuring this out?

I also cannot disable my new Lenovo PC's wireless adapter and I need to to
test some AP gear

 

[Yves Leclerc]

This "disable" process should only be for a "short-time" in order for the XP
file to be reset. You will then have the wireless card re-enabled as if
nothing happened.

You could always locate and try Winsockxpfix?

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Yyves, but I am not familiar w/ Winsockxpfix. I am unable to
disable the wireless connection even briefly and get the following message:

It is not possible to disable the connection at this time. The connection
may be
using one or more protocols that do not support Plug-and-Play, or it may
have been
initiated by another user or the system account.

There is only one user on the machine as far as I know and I don't know what
to do to diable this connection.
Any other ideas?
Thanks