A lady calls, saying she renewed her NIS subscription, went to install it, and got a message saying she should uninstall the older version. She uninstalled the old version of NIS, installs the new version, and then the computer slows down to a crawl… and she no longer has an internet connection (although the laptop wireless shows that it has a signal).

I was hoping to have a quiet Saturday, oh well…

When I get there, I find she has 2 Asus laptops… she says one has internet access and one doesn’t. Having 2 computers side by side should help me fix whatever the problem is.

The first thing I notice is that task manager is at 100%

Next, I notice that neither laptop has a working wireless connection.

After some investigation, it seems that the wireless router (a few rooms away) has a dodgy power connector. A bit of a jiggle, and the router is powered up again.

Back to the laptops, and sure enough, one can see the internet, the other cannot.

Task manager shows that zcfgsvc.exe is using almost all of the CPU. A quick search of the internet shows that zcfgsvc (which is part of the intel ProSet wireless software) will often go haywire, and then, most advice is to reinstall the drivers, or to disable the service… or failing that, rename the program.

But if I disable it, then there will be no wireless connectivity…

I start wondering how I’m going to remove and reinstall the intel wireless drivers and software. Then it dawns on me: I should just disable it completely, and use the (better quality) built-in XP wireless software.

After that, the internet is working (at last)… but after another reboot, the laptop is slow again… zcfgsvc is running again (but this time its not blocking internet access).

Ok, I look at all the standard windows startup areas and the services. I disable a few intel wireless – related applications. but nothing that has a name even remotely like zcfgsvc.exe… I do a few restarts between various attempts, but zcfgsvc is still running.

Ok, I’ll do as suggested in places like: http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/zcfgsvc.exe.html … I’ll disable zcfgsvc in c:windowssystem32… but its not there…

OK, I run a windows search of the whole hard drive… but nothing shows up. I change the windows explorer settings, so that it doesn’t hide anything… but still no luck.

So, I now have a program running berserk, I don’t know how it gets started, and I don’t know where it gets started from. Interesting!

I look at the intel entries under start -> all programs, and I see they are launched from c:program filesintelwirelessbin

Aha! There it is! I do my usual trick of renaming an executable to zcfgsvc.exx , then reboot the laptop, and the cpu hog is gone at last!

Now I can finally install NIS, and the install runs flawlessly.

Now to get home and enjoy the rest of my “day off”… (or so I thought)