Wireless Driver Disappeared

Hi

I have a Compaq presario V6000 Notebook running Windows XP SP2, my built in wireless is a Broadcom 802.11b/g W/LAN.

Yesterday I closed the lid as I sometimes do when I am not using it but don't want to cold boot, the amber wireless light usually goes back to blue after a few secs after I come out of standby, but it didn't, it stayed amber. I checked the device driver and it had a yellow exclamation mark on it, so I tried to update the driver and the report back stated the driver was fine. I uninstalled it, so that on a fresh boot up it would find it again, but it didn't find it, when I click on Hidden devices I have the packet schedular miniport, but no actual driver.I have tried so many things and Windows is giving me an error 45 and saying there is no wireless device installed. The light is amber all the time, and the switch is fine. I have hooked my notebook up to my main PC's Router via Ethernet to try and find a solution. I have updated my broadcom drivers but they install fine and that is all they do.I have been up and down in safe safe mode to no avail. I have also done a restore but that didn't bring the driver back either, I haven't installed anything recently either.

If anyone has any idea what might be wrong I would greatly appreciate any help or advice. Thanks.

 

If your using Symantic FW time to uninstall and download the tool to remove it. Symantic if you tell it to disable it, it actually does not. Chunk it and you will be better off.

 

I don't have symantic FW. I don't like Norton security software and avoid it like the plague because of issues such as the one you mentioned.

Thanks for the reply though, Norton would be the cause in many of these types of problems, but unfortunately not mine

 

You are saying the drivers install fine and then you say that nothing bring the drivers back, so what is it, do you have the drivers installed or not?

 

I can install the latest driver but it doesn't do anything, because Windows can't detect the wireless hardware. In system, hardware, and Device manager there is no entry for the broadcom driver anymore. If I search for new hardware it doesn't find anything. So I have nothing to install the driver on. I mentioned I updated the drivers to see if Windows would detect the Wireless with new drivers but it didn't.

In Device manager under network adapters it used to have:

Braodcom 802.11b/g WLAN

I think it is the Wireless host contoller because I checked the registry entry to change the permissions initially which brought it back briefly and it worked fine, but then when I rebooted the light stayed amber again so I checked the driver and it had a red cross on it, so I uninstalled it and rebooted hoping windows would deetct it but it was gone again this time for good as was the registry entry and I haven't been able to get it back since.

This however is still there:

Broadcom 802.11b/g W/LAN -Packet Schedular Miniport

 

Go directly to the Broadcom site and download the driver from there.

 

I did that already, but as I said windows cant detect the wireless hardware.
Thanks anyway for the replies.

 

If the warranty is still on, I would recommend you bring it back to the vendor.

Or, try to repair windows, boot with the cd in and choose repair, this is just a suggestion of last resource.

 

Yeah I think you're right, it is still under warrenty so I'll take it in let them have a look. Thanks for your help advice.

 

Hopefully that will solve your problem, but save your files before, they might attempt to do a clean install of Windows.