Customer calls and tells me he can no longer access the internet.

Now this is about 1 or 2 weeks after I removed a spyware infection.

All I did was remove antivir, and install avg free and avg anti-spyware (and remove the infection of course).

When I get there, the wireless icon shows the no wireless network within range message.

Looking at the config more closely, I see that under encryption, I can only select none, or WEP encryption. Where did the WPA encryption go?

I had setup the netgear WG111v2 adapter, a few months ago, so that it uses windows XP and WPA–PSK TKIP encryption… so whats going on?

After a few reboots, and looking at the device manager (without any progress), I try using the netgear utility… and it works… it allows me to connect to the wireless network…

Given that I don’t want to waste any more time, I tell the customer what has happened, and I cannot explain why the windows wireless doesn’t work properly, but to keep an eye on how the PC performs.

He says the PC has caused him lots of problems, and if it breaks down again, he will just toss it, and get a laptop instead.

With the cost of hardware nowadays, I’m afraid I’ll be seeing this happening a lot more often.