Wireless Internet forum: "A network cable is unplugged"

Can you tell me where I can find the Device Manager? Hopefully, once I locate that, I can follow through with the rest of your instructions.

How can I determine if I have encryption enabled such as WPA? Where can I find that information on the laptop?

How can I determine if I am broadcasting SSID from the router to let the laptop find it?

I very much appreciate your patience with me. As I mentioned previously, I am not a computer expert.

On my son's laptop, I found the Device Manager and the "Network Adapters".

Unfortunately, under "Network Adapters" there is not listed an item described as "wired/Ethernet adapter". Perhaps this is because the internet service in my home uses only a wireless connection, and the connection is obviously working because I am able to correspond with you on my own desktop.

In any case, I will list below the four items which are shown under "network adapters" on my son's laptop:

- 1394 Net Adapter
- Bluetooth Personal Area Network
- Intel(R) 82566MC Gigabit Network Connection
- Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN

(In case you need to know, my son is only visiting me from another local city, where he goes to university and also uses a wireless connection there.)

Do you think that there are one or more of the above items listed under "network adapters" on his laptop which should be disabled?

With respect to your other questions, I will try to answer the best way I can as follows.

We phoned my internet provider, and they confirmed that they could "see" my son's laptop in my house, so we know we have entered the correct password.

As well, the "WiFi" icon on his taskbar is "green" and is indicating that there is a wireless connection, and that the signal strength is "excellent". Other things that I have been able to check on his computer indicates that there is a working internet connection.

However, the problem remains that the "little computer" icon on his taskbar continues to have the red "x" through it, indicating that "a network cable is unplugged". Which therefore means that he cannot access a webpage through a browser.

I'm not sure what you mean by the SSID, but if it relates to a password, then, yes, we have used the proper password as confirmed by my internet provider.

As I mentioned previously, he originally got the red "x" (indicating that "a network cable is unplugged") immediately following the Windows Update which installed Internet Explorer 8 and SP3 for XP Pro.

When he tries to access the internet using Internet Explorer, he gets a blank white window which does not even display any message.

When he tries to use Firefox to access the internet, it "crashes" and says it wants to restart.

When he tries to use Google Chrome to access the internet, it actually gives a message "This webpage is not available", which indicates that at least this browser is working but it is still not able to access the internet.

So, should any of the items listed under his "network adapters" be "disabled", and do you have any other suggestions?

Once again, thanks so much for your patience with me. I do so very much appreciate your assistance.

I have been working on this problem on the basis that I thought that both the "little computer" icon and the "fan-shaped" WiFi icon had to be indicating a connection at the same time. However, I have since been able to confirm that when there is an internet connection, only the "little computer" icon needs to be indicating a connection; the "fan-shaped" WiFi icon will never be active and showing a connection at the same time. Therefore, I have concluded that depending on whether Windows or Intel is managing the wireless connection will determine which of those two icons will indicate a "connection".

As per your recommendation, I changed the manager of the wireless connection from Intel to Windows, and the "little computer" icon on the taskbar no longer has the red "x" through it, but rather now is indicating that there is a wireless connection and that the signal strength is "excellent".

I disabled the Gigabit adapter, however, it didn't change anything, and I was still not able to access a webpage.

The Network Set-up Wizard does not indicate any available wired connection.

Because of what I have explained above, the "icons" aspect of the situation has now been figured out.

However, I am still at "square 1". I am still not able to access the internet on his laptop.

But now I have a new aspect of the situation to work on as follows:

When I was making some of the changes mentioned above, a message appeared which has appeared before, but which would always disappear before I could figure out what it was. The message said (and this is probably important) "A wireless physical adapter is not installed."

As I mentioned previously, this message has appeared before while I have been working on this internet access problem, but it always disappeared so quickly that I did not have time to have it register in my mind and try to do something about it. In any case, when it appeared this time, I tried clicking on the message to get more information, but to no avail.

I find it interesting that if indeed his laptop is supposed to have a "wireless physical adapter" installed, why it is that suddenly he no longer has one!

But it seems logical that perhaps I should persue this aspect of the situation in a new attempt to solve the problem.

Therefore, I was wondering if it might be possible for you to give me some direction on where I should go from here to persue that aspect further.

As mentioned previously, my son's laptop is a Futjitsu Lifebook E-8410 laptop (purchased 2007) loaded with Windows XP Pro.

Thank you so very much again for sticking with me on this problem.