After four hours, he left scratching his head........

[Big Booger]

Does the NIC work? I have went nuts sorting out wireless issues... only to find out that it's because I forgot to set the DNS properly or some other setting related issue.

My question is, does the hardware show up in the laptop? Meaning does the wireless NIC work?

First thing I would do, is rollback the laptop prior to any change done using the sys restore.

Then I would check that all the hardware on the laptop is working specifically the NIC.

Then I would go into the router, and check the settings there. Make sure that you have your settings properly configured and using another wired/wireless desktop or laptop make sure that everything works *you can go on the web, download, check email etc...

If the web is working on the PC with a wired connection, but you don't get anything with the wireless then I would:

Check the wireless settings in the router (especially if you have WEP or WAP enabled)... if so, then when you go to laptop you need to make sure that your WEP or WAP passwords/info match.

I'd check to see if you have DHCP enabled in the router. If so then your laptop should auto connect and obtain an IP automatically. If not, then you need to make sure you have configured the IPs in the laptop correctly.

If the router works, and the laptop hardware checks out, and the settings are fine, and you still cannot connect, even after doing a system restore, and resetting the modem, etc...

I'd after extensively exhausting all options, like removing the firewall completely (uninstall any third parties or disable windows built in firewall) get rid of the Antivirus (temporarily) even uninstalling it as necessary. And remove the AOL software from the system (again temporarily) just to see what if any software troubles might be causing the issue.

It has to be one of the following

hardware
software
configuration

Narrow it down one by one.

To setup your wireless network:

https://www.microsoft.com/athome/mor...lesssetup.mspx

What does the networking properties say on the laptop? Is there an icon in the networking connections area? Does the wireless icon popup in the taskbar ?

Do you have any other wireless device to check the router with?

[Curio]

Make sure that you haven't disabled stuff in the system configuration utility before you start troubleshooting. Many people use this as a kind startup control panel (which it isn't) and then forget all about it.

First task when troubleshooting is to isolate the problem, first to which device then to hardware or software. You can do this by swapping out equipment and by booting to a 'Live' CD/DVD, it's not really on for most home users but if you are a tech then you will have loads of equipment laying about.

Laptops often have a physical on/off switch for the WLAN card as well and on some that I have seen it is almost invisible, make sure it's not OFF and the software off switch isn't enabled, on this DELL it's 'fn + F2'.

Also make sure you are logged in as an admin user.