I'm working on a Dell Inspiron 8600, Windows XP Home, Intel PRO 2200B/G:

The owner reports that his wireless connection just stopped working some time back. When I first booted the machine, the Intel PRO Connection utility detected my wireless network but could not detect the SSID (SSID broadcast is turned on). When I switched to Windows Wireless Zero Configuration utility, the adaptor could not detect my network at all. Device Manager indicates all systems are normal. I downloaded the latest drivers and connection utility from Intel and performed the upgrade. The problem persists. I disabled the hard line network adaptor, changed configuration to connect 802.11b and tried again with the same result. Network connection via ethernet cable is fine. There are no suspicious applications or processes running; I did a scan with SysInternals Autoruns, downloaded and installed 30 day trial of NOD32, which detected and quarantined two trojans and an adware program on first scan and came up clean on the second.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to proceed?

If you have a USB Wireless Adapter, it could be a good idea to give this a try and check that the computer doesn't have any general connection problems with wireless network. If everything works out fine, you can pin it down to either a hardware error with the Intel Pro adapter or a driver error, which doesn't seem likely to be the problem considering that you have updated things.

Thank you, Owen, for your response. You pretty well confirmed what I suspected, that it is a hardware failure. I just wanted to make sure that I had not overlooked something obvious. It bothers me that, should this be a failure of the wireless adaptor's receiver, neither Windows Wireless Zero Configuration service nor Intel PROSet/Wireless detected said failure. Also, it leaves me wondering why IntelPROSet/Wireless detects my AP signal quality as "Good" but not read the SSID, and the Windows Wireless service doesn't detect it at all.

I don't have a USB or a PCMCIA wireless adaptor to verify, but I guess that is the logical course to take in order to eliminate a system problem as opposed to a device problem. Thank you for your reply.

There could possibly a few more configuration problems, rather than it being a hardware problem. Have you tried to connect it to a network without security e.g. wep and wpa switched off to see if this is perhaps the problem? It is really strange that the device is able to detect the signal quality, which suggests something in there is working.

There are lots of things to try when diagnosing this sort of problem. There are also a list of known issues here which may or may not be the cause of the problem. Some of that stuff is pretty basic though.

My AP was configured for Open access, no WEP and no WPA. Also, I verified ALL configuration settings in the wireless adaptor, making only those changes detailed in my original thread.

I ran Intel® PROSet/Wireless Software Manual Diagnostics, which failed on the Association Test. I can't remember the log entry error message and I returned the machine to the owner, but I believe it was an Authentication failed....or possibly Pre-authentication failed...... error message.

Again, I thank you for your response.

Addendum: The more I think about it, I'm convinced it was Pre-authentication failed....