Last week my mother-in-law called us up and said that her Internet wasn’t working. This has happened before and usually turns out to be an issue with Rogers, her ISP, or the router, and can usually be solved by resetting either or both the cable modem or router. She’d already tried that with no success.
I thought briefly about trying to debug the problem over the phone but decided that it would just be frustrating for both of us. She’s gotten comfortable with her laptop and Internet use since we set it up for her a couple of years ago and even managed to set up her wireless all-in-one printer without our help. But trying to figure out wireless connectivity problems is difficult enough even when you’re sitting at the computer, so I said we’d come over on the weekend and look at it.
To confuse matters even more, she had gotten an error message indicating that her copy of Windows wasn’t genuine (it is) and she had 30 days to purchase a registered copy. I figured this was probably caused by the Windows Genuine Advantage software not being able to phone home, but there was always the possibilty she’d been hit by some kind of malware.
When I got there, I found that the computer wasn’t seeing the wireless network. The Internet connection was working, as I found when I connected to the router via Ethernet. Oddly, the Windows wireless driver software wouldn’t see any connections while the Toshiba wireless software found seven or eight, which means that every one of her close neighbours must have wireless home networks. And her wireless network was there, because her wireless picture frame was reporting a connection to it. So the problem had to be with the laptop’s wireless driver.
When I tried to add the network information in the wireless software dialog, I got an error message indicating that some software on the laptop was conflicting with the wireless software and to look at Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 871122. (I didn’t write down the full text, unfortunately). I googled the message and immediately found the article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/871122
It starts out:
Error message when you try to run the Wireless Network Setup Wizard after you update to Windows XP Service Pack 2, Service Pack 3 or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005
The Wireless Network Setup Wizard and the View Available Wireless Networks feature both rely on the Wireless Zero Configuration service to provide their functionality to Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Microsoft Windows XP Table PC Edition 2005. If the Wireless Zero Configuration service is not available, you receive an error message that directs you to this article.
Now, I don’t know why the Wireless Zero Configuration software woudn’t be available. I’m pretty sure she’s running all available service packs, updates, and security patches, which I have set to install automatically. I’ve done nothing to her wireless or Internet configuration since setting it up, and neither has she. It’s been months since she set up the Epson printer, so I didn’t think that installation was the problem. The only thing I can think of is that one of Microsoft’s periodic security updates did something to break it.
The article included a FixIt link to download and install a patch. As soon as I did that, the wireless connection started working with no further configuration required. I updated Microsoft Security Essentials while I was at it and encounted no more nagging messages about validation.
I don’t know why this patch couldn’t have been installed automatically in the first place. The fix was simple enough, although the error message could have been more specific about what needed to be done – it didn’t refer to the Wireless Zero Configuration software or indicate that the article included a downloadble patch.
As it was, she baked me a very fine lemon meringue pie for my trouble.