Solved! Acer 3810T w/ Windows 7 - Won't Show WiFi Networks

markw10

Distinguished
Jul 18, 2005
3
0
18,510
I have an Acer Aspire 3810T running Windows 7. I was having problems with WiFi not showing up at times and when I would do a restart the WiFi networks would show up.
I was told earlier the best way to fix this is to uninstall the WiFi drivers and then reinstall them. I uninstalled 2 drivers in Device Manager and both seemed to have to do with WiFi and I know one was Intel WiFI Link 5100 AGN.
I then did a search for hardware to reinstall the drivers and the one listed above is the one that was found but I think it's missing another one that I deleted.
Unfortunately no WiFi networks show up at all on my laptop. When I select the bars at the bottom right of the screen it's simply empty. I have shut down the system, restarted, and it appears my WiFi is on.
If I select Open Network and Sharing Center and select Set up a New Network or Connection and select Manually Connect to a New Network for example it says "An Unexpected Error Occurred" so I know something is wrong with the networking drivers.
Without WiFi the laptop is almost useless and I don't want to reinstall Windows 7 and have to set up everying again.
Does anyone have any idea of what may be wrong and how I can go about correct this issue?
Thank you for your help.
 

markw10

Distinguished
Jul 18, 2005
3
0
18,510
I'll give that a try. I even thought of reinstalling Windows 7 but I don't want to lose all my settings/software. If I do something like a reinstall of Windows 7 or do the recovery/repair CD won't it reset everything to factory defaults?