I was up early to fix my laptop: late last night, I took the wireless card out to test something, and on putting it back it Windows decided it was new hardware, and re-installed the driver! "What the ...." - I thought, stopping just short of the expletive! I left it and went to bed and read Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence" (apt given Thursday's events in London). Never fix anything if the mood is wrong!
I now had two instances of the wireless software running. A sure recipe for confusion and problems. This morning I removed both, deleting the drivers and the application, only to find that D-Link no longer have the driver on their web page. My card is obsolete! I mentally kicked myself for not checking first. By pure luck, or the care of a guardian angel, I found a copy of the driver on a memory stick, having hit this problem some year or two back. So I'm running again.
Then on to the next challenge: I have another laptop running Ubuntu (Linux). I upgraded to the latest version thinking that the effort of getting it back to usable shape would be worth it as Ubuntu 6.06 has long term support. How to get the wireless card working? I know it worked in the UK in the British Library for instance, but here I am using WEP encryption (yes, I know it can be readily cracked). After an hour and much Google searching I was no further forward. Then I changed the WEP key yet again, and lo, it was working. Had I not just done that several times?
A little more maintenance and I'm done - should be good for another year or two! Why these things happen I will call a mystery. They just happen.
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