Reason XLII why I use a Mac
Today our lone, testing PC running Windows XP SP2 at the office sort of stopped working. That is, it was working fine, and then all of the sudden we lost our wireless connection. Usually when this happens (and on this machine, it happens a fair bit) we go into the Network Connections, double-click on the wireless connection, and click on the handy "Repair" button. (Why Windows can't just repair itself when it detects a problem is beyond me.) But this time was different.Windows wanted me to reconnect to the network by going into the list of available networks, and clicking on the Connect button. I did this, and it had an endless progress bar that said it was waiting for the network, or some nonsense like that. Impatient and uncaring about this computer, I held down the power button until the machine shut off. I turned it back on, but the same thing kept happening. At this point, I got Mike involved, as he absolutely loves dealing with PC problems. *duck* We rebooted properly a couple of times, but still no go.
With Jamie now at the helm, he discovered there was a question mark beside the wireless adapter in the hardware section found somewhere in the Windows control panel. The properties for this device let us know that the driver was not loaded because there was a "problem". It said to click on the Troubleshoot button, which happened to be greyed-out. Right...
With me back in the captain's seat, I rebooted once again (this makes about five reboots now?) and went straight to the hardware page to see if there was a change. While there still was a question mark beside the device, the Troubleshoot button was now clickable. I clicked it, and it opened up a help program that appeared to be loading content via the internet. Obviously, nothing ever displayed.
Giving up on Windows magically repairing this problem (since it magically caused it, you'd think it could fix it too), I pulled out our handy, 25' ethernet cable, and plugged this computer into the switch across the room. Luckily, the cabled network adapter was still functional, and I went to the LinkSys website to download the wireless driver installer program. Before I could reinstall the driver, I had to uninstall the previous software in there. A visit to the Add/Remove Software control panel later, and I was uninstalling the previous software. Except that it couldn't complete because it said a particular file was locked. I checked via the Windows Explorer, but it was not locked. I clicked on the Retry button about five times, and it eventually seemed to work.
I then ran the installer program, and reinstalled the driver. I went into the Hardware control panel to see if the problem was fixed, only now the wireless adapter wasn't there at all. On a hunch, I clicked on the "scan for new hardware" button, and it found the device &mdash only, there was no driver for it. I clicked on Install Driver, and to its credit, it seemed to find the driver I had just installed, and it installed it again. Yay! Finally, the wireless adapter worked (after a slight jump-start to get it to connect to the network, obtain an IP address, etc). I unplugged the unsightly ethernet cable, and put it away.
The lesson I learned here is to never delete the driver installation programs, as things may magically break and require a reinstall to get them going again. Oh, and before you ask, yes we have the Windows firewall enabled, the Microsoft anti-spyware tool, a crappy virus scanner, no use of Outlook, and the machine sits behind a real firewall. I doubt this was caused by a virus or some other type of malware; I think this is actually kind of normal in the Windows world, as many memories of my dark, dark past came rushing back to me. Admittedly, this machine gives us fewer problems than that to which we were previously accustomed, though we all still consider CREWPC to be the runt of the office computers.
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