Wireless Adaptor Disappeared

[Daryl]

Hello,

I installed a Netgear WG311v3 wireless adaptor a couple of days ago.
Initially it was slightly troublesome - it would regularly drop
connection if using the Netgear utility provided.
However, I switched to the Microsoft utilities which worked fine and
yesterday, I upgraded the drivers provided by Netgear from the
Windows update site and everything started working brilliantly (via
the Netgear utility).

This morning things were still working well until I tried to copy a 500Mb
file from another computer on the network. It almost completed (it was up
to '10 seconds remaining') when the PC froze.

I had to press the reset button and when it all came back to life, the
Netgear utility didn't seem to appear and , upon checking Device Manager it
seemed that there was no mention of the wireless adaptor. I tried
rebooting... still no mention. I shut down, unplugged the computer,
replugged the computer and rebooted... still not there!

I'm not sure what to do now. It was all working so well!

Any ideas?

Many thanks in advance,

Daz

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Turn off the PC. Uninstall the device. Restart the PC. Turn it off
again.... reinstall the device and see if it reappears.

 

[Daryl]

Thanks, this did the trick! Could you shed any light on what the problem
could have been so that I can possibly understand what went wrong and how it
was cured (I like a bit of learning)!

Thanks again,

Daz

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Glad it's back. But why the Device Manager lost it in the first place....
that's another question. I have seen it happen a few times with PCI
devices, but I have no specific cause I can pin down. Physically
uninstalling and reinstalling it usually does the trick.