Just got my fiance a new laptop that came with Vista on it. Knowing her habits as far as internet browsing the first thing I did was download and install some spyware protections.

Lavasoft Adaware

Javacool Spyware blaster

Spybot S&D

And Iolo System Mechanic 7 to help general health of the system.

Her internet worked fine for me to download all the installation files etc. but now within a few minutes of booting up the wireless interface is disabled.

I think Vista is disabling it automatically due to some conflict but I haven't been able to find it. I went through and disabled the services associated with System Mechanic and no result.

I'm probably going to uninstall everything tonight and see if that fixes the problem then reinstall them one by one but I was hoping to figure it out without having to do that.

Was wondering if anyone knew of compatibility issues with any of those software packages or if there is an error log somewhere that might tell me why Vista is disabling the network interface.

Some laptops have a physical switch to disable the wireless, have you knocked the switch by mistake?.

Some laptops have a keyboard shortcut to turn the wireless off and on, usually FN and another key?. could you have pressed them by mistake?.

Nope. The network switch is definitely on. I start it up and it initially connects to the internet just fine then a few minutes later it is disconnected and checking the Device Manager shows the wireless interface disabled.