My Wireless section in Network Connections is gone

What model computer and operating system are you running? Upon reboot, after Crapware removal of wireless device, did the Windows Add Hardware wizard pop-up?

Sorry. Here's more detail.
Inspiron 4150 laptop w/ Win XP Pro fully up to date.

I don't recall whether the Add Hardware wizard came up immediately.
I did a reboot - no Wifi which I rely on.
Did a Device Manager and all Ethernet and Mini 1180 items had a red mark in them. Went down the path of disable/enable. No joy. The tried to uninstall but got message couldn't do it as might be needed on reboot. Tried the trouble shooter.

All this messing around was using docs from Win Help (which it did't).

Somehow in Dev Mgr I viewed hidden devices and 1180 Mini was there. I may have double clicked device (can't rememeber how I did it but), I uninstalled the drivers.

Eventually I did remove all Network devices from Dev Mgr and the New Hardware wizard came alive - found the ethernet devices but not the Mini Wifi 1180 card.

I used my Dell CD to reinstall and also got new new drivers via download from Dell (R46482) after getting some bum advice via a Google search.

I did so many things and didn't keep a paper log of changes.. Should have done better at this as I've been in the mainframe business 40 yrs.

It is coincidental or did the Autoruns/CCcleaner set up a
condition to zap my Mini card?

The ZDNET blog had a bunch of folks who weren't happy with this article although many were.

Hopefully this is more detail than you need.

Thanks

Yes, I would be in agreement, if your asking me if the Crapware is the culprit of your wireless trouble? Try reinstalling the chipset driver in safe mode? Then reinstall the wireless drivers via the New hardware wizard.

Thanks for the help. It works not but how it did so I haven't a clue.

I looked up Safe Mode in Win Help. It talks about a message and F8 at bootup.

Well during bootup the only thing it says to do is to use F2 for basic setup.

1st time I ignored F2 and used F8. Viola! There was Safe Mode but I hit enter as the only OS choice was WIN XP PRO and it appear to boot normally. Probably had to hit F8 again to get deeper into Safe Mode.

Rebooted again using F2. this time I got into basic mode and on screen 5 or so, my MINI PCI was reported installed but disabled. So I enabled it. There was no install chipset choice. And the reboot continued normally. Still no Wifi.

Company arrived for dinner. My machine eventually went ot sleeep for the night and this morning I have WiFi. No new Hardware Wizard, no reboot, nothing and there it was.

Gotta love/hate Gates & Co.