Disappearing Wireless Network Adapter

[Figly]

The wireless network adapter on my laptop has recently decided to begin disappearing sporadically. My laptop is a Compaq f572US with Windows Vista Home Premium, which it came installed with. When I originally purchased the machine approximately 11 months ago, all was working properly. The problem started a few weeks ago when I was using wireless internet, then closed my laptop to move it to another location. When I opened it, the wireless would not work, and upon further investigation Windows claimed that "this computer does not have a wireless network adapter installed and configured", despite the fact that I was using it successfully not 10 minutes ago and changed nothing since that time. I tried restarting the computer several times without any improvement, same problem. The problem resolved itself after I shut the computer again and opened it again, and has not happened since then. My hard drive died and I had to order a replacement from HP, which I just installed and put Vista back on. All was working fine for the past few days, until this afternoon when I came back from class and opened my laptop to find the wireless network adapter again had disappeared. It is not listed in device manager at all. Restarting, reinstalling the driver, and trying to have Windows diagnose the problem does not solve anything. I think it might have something to do with the Windows updates that I installed, because although I can't say for sure, I think it was at that point that the device started to disappear. That might have been the problem last time as well. Does anyone have any advice on or familiarity with this situation? Please help, I am going nuts over here! Thank you in advance!

 

[jaqie]

Let's see...
The first thing I would try is disabling any power management with the wifi card, when closing the lid the system could put the card in a low-power or power off state, and it may just be getting old and starting to have issues with being put into that state (or being pulled out of it). A related possible cause is it may be becoming unseated, you should check the docs for the system to see how to get at the mini pci slot, and remove and re-insert the wifi card with the system off and battery removed. The third and least attractive possibility is the card is actually dying, in which case, it needs replaced.

 

[Figly]

Would the power management settings for the card be located in device manager? If so, I think it is worst case and the card is dead, because the device is not showing up in device manager at all. I did try removing and re-seating the card.