I still think you'd be better off in a group related to wireless networking,
but I do plenty of wireless troubleshooting in real life, I just haven't
done it online before.
I'm unclear whether you are using Wireless zero configuration (i.e. Windows
(and xp) wireless services) or the proprietary interface supplied by your
wireless equipment vendor to make the connection?
I like the idea of the patch Plun suggests--that ought to straighten out any
issues with the Windows wireless stuff, and give you the latest bits. I've
put that on three machines so far with no noticeable result except that they
now connect to my WPA2 AP which they didn't before.
So--you downloaded Microsoft Antispyware, and installed it. Did you then
clean up some spyware?
One result of such cleanups is a broken Winsock LSP chain, which the fix you
cited earlier is supposed to take care of. However, if third-party software
also adds itself to the winsock LSP chain, you need to reinstall that
software. This'd be the first time I've heard of needing to reinstall
software associated with just a wireless nic because of this issue, but I
suppose it isn't impossible. So--one recommendation might be to remove and
reinstall your wireless nic software/drivers.
If this were some simple performance bug--i.e. a situation in which having
Microsoft Antispyware active on the machine causes such a hit that other
functionality suffers, I'd think simply shutting down the program via
right-clicking on the notification tray icon would do the trick. I don't
think it is too intimately involved in the network stack.
So--does it ever say that it is "connected" with the unsecured sites you are
trying to connect to? If it does, what are the results of IPCONFIG /all at
a command prompt? Do you get a DHCP distributed address? Do you get DNS
server settings, and a default gateway?
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