Hi,

In July last year, I purchased a HP Pavilion a6010n Desktop PC with Windows Vista Home Premium. I am connected to my brother's computer through Linsky's wireless PCI adapter and I have never had any trouble with connection to the internet until about 3 weeks ago. One day I turned on my pc and the computer icon in the task bar had a red "X" through it and when I clicked on "Connect to a Network", it didn't list my brother's computer or recognize I had any networks at all. When I opened Device Manager there was a yellow exclamation mark in front of Lynsky's Wireless-G Network Adapter.

After I called Linsky's and talked to a technician, they had me upgrade my firmware and changed channels in my settings. That worked . . . for a day. The next day the same thing happened - no networks. I called them back and was told it was a HP problem and to call HP. I called HP and they charged me 50 dollars and told me it was a Linksy's issue and to call them back. Over the last 3 weeks this has happened about 5 times when I start my computer. Each time a Linksy's technician was able to correct it, after doing a million things and being on the phone forever - but, only temporarily, and only to have it happen again. The last time I called I was told it was all because my Windows firewall was on and to turn it off, which I did. That seemed to work until today -- same thing when I turned on the computer.

What could be causing this? Any ideas? I read somewhere that Vista x64 may not be compatible with Linksy's products. Could this be why? Please, any help is appreciated.

I speak XP; you will translate to Vista.

It is most likely a driver problem. New hardware, new software, and updates are likely sources.
Your Events logs are invaluable to understanding the problem. No network connection (red X) and non-working device (yellow !) are visible. The logs may confirm the device problem or show an earlier trigger.

The logs will also pinpoint when this began. This may help focus on the source.

In device manager, driver rollback is a safe step. Monitor for changes & watch the Event logs. You can easily revert to new drivers.

Linksys frequent involvement - is there a pattern to the steps that make this work? If they uninstall drivers, then restart; this could be a compatability issue.

I did not cover failing hardware because of Linksys' involvement. However, new or different hardware is another approach.

I am new here, so I am visiting ignored posts to get us re-acquainted.

Have you tried to uninstall / reinstall the Linksys adapter through the Device Manager in the Computer Management console?

If you have a device which appears in the Device Manager with a yellow circle containing a question mark, its usually because the OS doesn't have or doesn't know which driver to install and apply to the device at startup. Its possible that the driver became corrupt or has malfunctioned altogether, in which case you need to reinstall the driver for the hardware to work properly again. Windows polls your system at startup for all devices present and loads the appropriate drivers from your hard drive.

IMPORTANT:: You want to make sure that you have the device driver CD-ROM available or copy the device driver to a location on your hard drive so that you can re-install it again after removing the device from your system.

I would first, uninstall the device by doing the following:



When the Computer Management console opens, click in the left hand side to open the Device Manager node. On the right hand side of the screen, right-click the device with the yellow circle, and choose Uninstall to remove the hardware device from your system. Next try to manually re-install the device by right-clicking your local machine at the top of the device tree in the right hand side of the screen, choose Scan for Hardware changes.

Windows will poll your system for any devices which are present for which there are no drivers loaded or installed. This should prompt you with the Found New Hardware wizard. You want to first try to get Windows to automatically install the hardware drivers. If that fails, then try to manually install the hardware driver from the CD-ROM or the hard drive location where you saved the driver.

Try doing the uninstall / reinstall, post feedback for additional advice.