Vista, desktop pc, How to turn wireless "on"

[4Orbs]

My wireless usb adapter has been working fine for two months. Several days ago I found my young granddaughter pushing keys on the desktop keyboard. That is when the wireless stopped working. I believe my granddaughter managed to turn off the wireless by hitting the correct combination of keys. I cannot find any information on how to turn the wireless back on other than "turn on the switch (which my desktop does not have), or use the right combination of function keys (which is probably F2 + Fn... My desktop does not have an Fn key). My question is "How do I turn the wireless back on without a switch or Fn key?" Thanks for any suggestions you might offer.

[Dunworkin]

Don't know about Vista, but on XP you would right Click on My Network Places, left click on Properties and then look for your Network Connection (adapter) and see if it is disabled.  If so, right click on it and choose enable.  You may also want to look in Device Manager and see if there are problems indicated in the Network Adapter section.

[4Orbs]

Thanks for the reply. I have done everything, all suggested settings, channel changes, manual connect and any other fixes (even long shots) that I've found on several forums and websites yet nothing works. The device manager, network connection manager, driver manager all say the wireless is enabled and working properly but it refuses to detect my wireless router network. It was working great for the first two months, no problems at all, then boom it just stopped after my granddaughter did something on the keyboard. I feel almost certain that she just turned the wireless off somehow, just like you can switch it off when using a laptop to conserve the battery. This is on a desktop without any apparent means of switching between off and on. Is the wireless connection supposed to be bridged to the LAN or 1394 adapter in some way? Or is it just a separate entity? I have turned on network discovery, turned off the firewall, assigned static IP's, re-installed the driver, plugged into different USB ports, disabled IPV6, looked in the BIOS (but I'm not sure what to look for in BIOS) but still no luck. The adapter light blips once when I re-insert it into the USB port but it doesn't light up after that. The router is working correctly because my son can still connect his PS3 wirelessly and my other computer with XP and wired connection still work correctly. There must be something hidden deep in Vista that can turn it back on.

[Corleone]

Well firstly tell you that there is no such wireless switch present on your Desktop ...so forgot this thing that your Grand daughter had done something on the keybroad & the wireless is turned off. .....

Go to Device Manager & check under network adapter ...what is the Make of the wireless adapter... tell me the Model number .... might be possible that we need to reinstall the drivers of the adapter ....

[4Orbs]

The adapter is a Linksys WUSB54GSC and the router is a Netgear WGR614. One wired connection to HP Pavilion 760 running Win XP Home and the wireless adapter plugged into a HP Pavilion a6303 with Vista. Today I managed to get the wireless adapter to detect the network by enabling the "Connect automatically" and "Connect even if the router is not broadcasting SSID name." But it still won't let me connect. And it only detects the network maybe one out of every five tries. I've reinstalled the drivers from cd several times, and the Linksys Network Monitor never appears on the taskbar, only the Windows Network Connection icon shows.

[Corleone]

Try changing the wireless channels on the wireless router.

[4Orbs]

Still won't let me connect. I Changed the router channel to 1, the wireless adapter detected the network after 7 attempts but said "Windows cannot connect to this network". Then I changed the adapter channel to 1 (don't know if the two are supposed to be in agreement) and the same thing, several attempts before the adapter detects the network, but I still can't connect. Signal strength is excellent according to the adapter.

[Corleone]

Try changing the USB adapter's port. Id its connected to USB1 port connect it to USB 2 port. If that also doesn't work, try this adapter on other computer to check if it is not gone bad.

[4Orbs]

Corleone, I appreciate your help but none of the changes you suggested made any improvement in the connectivity. I did not try installing the adapter on my other (XP) computer for fear of losing the only working internet connection I have. The adapter (on Vista) can detect my network only if I set up the connection manually. And it still says "Windows cannot connect to this network", with no explanation or other option than to "Connect to another network". The signal strength from the router broadcast is listed as excellent. I know that there is another network (school network) in my area that the adapter detected in the past, but it won't detect that network now, nor will it detect my network unless it is manually set up. I'm wondering if a recent Windows Update changed some settings that can simply be changed back to the way they were previously? I tried a previous restore point with no luck. The story is the same whether the firewall is on or off. I read in another thread on this forum that the poster with the same problem but different adapter felt as if the Linksys adapter and Windows Vista were fighting each other for control of the wireless connection. That is exactly what my problem feels like. I personally feel that Vista is a bunch of crap. It may work well for an IT specialist, but not the average home computer noob.

[DrDanz]

Have you tried running the Windows Vista update.  I had problems with getting Vista to load drivers for an adapter which was solved once I ran the update tool on Windows.  Just get the feeling that there are problems between drivers and Vista.