Wifi 'gone' on XP pro...

Wife's Aspire 1 with XP Home installed got nasty virus. Something happened with AVG Free, and is started to flag lots of windows system files. And I, like an idiot. 'Healed' them all. Long stry short, Aspire starts endless loop of booting - rebooting.

So I install XP pro on it. And download the driver packages from this site. And all seemed quite well. LAst night it was up and running, and I imaged the thing using Acronis. The wife was playing a flash game with our daughter via wifi, and everything was cool in device manager (excepting the SMbus controller with still had a yellow exclamation point). I had installed bit defender, and then removed it to allow the machine to work with the shockwave flash game the wife was playing. In anycase I think that is really unrelated to anything happening now, but stated just for completeness.

So today, the wife goes to check email, and it can;t find gmail. I look in network connections and there is no wireless adapter present on the system. So I re-run the atheros install package "WLAN_Atheros_v7.6.0.224.zip" and it tells me that 'hey there ain't no WLAN card on the system dude'. I look for the hardware wireless switch (not too familiar with this thing yet). I find it. I switch it to and fro - yet no wireless. No LEDs no nothing. What gives? I've scanned for new hardware, re-installed chipset drivers 'Chipset_Intel_v.8.3.0.1018.zip' and managed to get the SMbus controller out of yellow exclamation land - but still no wlan card!!!!

I recall seeing the wifi led (right position of the two) being on in the past - but can;t recall if it was on when the wifi was working under XP pro. I'd think this LED is hardwired to the transmitter power and would no care about software. Is that correct? Anyone know?

Short of restoring the image I made with Acronis last night, I am unsure of what to do.
Take out the wireless card and re-insert?
The switch has spring action still but seems a bit loose - anychance the switch cover has lost the 'nub' on the micro switch or whatever it actuates in the aspire 1?

Should have imaged the thing back when it was a XP home machine. But I was lazy. Still no reason I can't run XP pro right?

Edit: Well I yanked the battery, and opened a cover on the back of the aspire 1 that I thought was for the wifi card, seems it's empty at the moment. Re-assembled, powered on, and wifi was working again. Dunno. Don't like mysteries.

 

It looks like this problem is related to this thread: http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=7476

 

Happens to me all the time. I often find it by having a wirless problem (10+ times a day) and disabling/enabling the adapter. Often times I am forced to do this in the Device Manage and it doesn't reappear without a full power cycle.