Laptop wireless card not enabled [or detected in Device Manager]

Here's the hardware involved:

Dell Inspiron 8600
IntelPRO/Wireless 2200BG 3A Network Connection (Dell)
AT&T-Yahoo u_Verse Residential Gateway


Yesterday I managed to pickle my wife's laptop big-time and wound up doing a reinstall of Win XP (SP2). Before that she was able to get on-line, surf the Net, receive and send-emails just fine. Since the reinstall, there's no icon in the Sys Tray indicating any signal coming from the RG.

Today I reinstalled the Everest utility which shows there is a wireless card (see its ID, above) in the laptop and that it's not enabled. But Device Manager doesn't know about the card, and the Control Panel > Network Connections doesn't, either.

After a Search on this BBS I found some threads dealing with different routers, and one had a link to some drivers. I found the one for our laptop's wireless card, downloaded it to my desktop and copied it on a CD to the laptop and installed it there. The ReadMe file talks about disabling the Win XP Wireless Manager. Trouble is, there's nowhere to do that. A Windows Search for "Intel PROSet/Wireless" doesn't find anything except the User's Guide I'm reading. And in Start > Programs there's no Network Adapters icon to do the job there. In Network Connections the only thing listed under LAN or Hi-Speed Internet is "1394 Connection," nothing about wireless.

AT&T's u-Verse's Level 2 tech support has tried valiantly, last night and again today, but they can't reconfigure something that isn't accessible.

Any ideas on how to get this laptop's wireless card to come to life?

(Should this thread be moved to the Hardware forum?)

 

TonyT: Thanks for replying.

So far, so good. I downloaded and installed the chipset driver, then the wireless connection driver for our laptop. The icon for a wireless connection appeared in the System Tray, which is a major improvement. It temporarily showed a handful of available wireless signals, one of which was mine. I selected it and entered the code AT&T u-Verse left with me. It briefly showed an excellent connection, but then it showed an error message about a connection problem. I suspect another step is still necessary.

When you say:

how exactly do I go about doing each of those?

 

Hi BOBBOO,

Can't tell you how to disable the Intel software, don't have it. You may not have it either.

Wireless Zero is an XP Service. Scroll down to it and see if it's running and that the startup type is Automatic. If not, double click on the line and Start it and change the Startup Type.

 

charlesvar: Awhile ago I looked into the Services and turned off the four Intel services listed and turned on the Wireless Zero listing. That resulted in the laptop and the Residential Gateway (RG) at least recognizing each other and the wireless card being recognized. I had to phone AT@T's u-Verse tech support again and got a few configuration details squared away. So the problem seems to be solved and now I'm back on-line and feverishly downloading all sorts of updates for the numerous programs that were lost and had to be reinstalled. Thanks to everyone who helped. Once again the BBS saved somebody's bacon!