Windows 7: Device status - no driver installed, but driver IS installed

I don't think this is a driver problem per se; I think it's Windows. Every now and then my WiFi stops working, and if I go to dev mgr, the General tab tells me that "No drivers are installed for this device" for device status. On the other tabs, however, I have all the details on the installed driver, and if I ask Windows to update the driver, it tells me that the best driver is already installed. The problem is solved by rebooting, but I find that annoying. I'd like to figure out WHY it does that. I've saved earlier versions of that particular driver from over the last three years, and the problem occurs with all of the drivers. This is a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit system. The driver is an Intel driver; the one installed at this moment (it just happened again, and I have not rebooted, since I had a powerline enet outlet handy), and the version of the Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN is 14.3.1. I have other versions of that driver saved, from 13.2.1.5 to 15.1.1_Ds64. I had reverted to the 14.3.1 because the more recent versions seemed to be worse about the driver disabling itself or whatever it is doing. Coincidentally with this, the event viewer shows that mmc.exe was terminated because it was hanging. I had just run sfc yesterday, and there are no corrupt files that Windows cannot fix, and there weren't even any corrupt files that it DID fix.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...eng&iid=dc_rss
second from top is 64 bit version.
It's nearly a full version number higher than the newest you have.

Thanks; I have been using Driver Genius to get the drivers, and had not checked since July. I had been going to http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect/wireless, which tells me that my Intel® WiFi Link 5100 is up to date, but tells me that the installed version is 14.3.2.1. Running the Wireless_15.2.0_Ds64.exe ends up installing the identical WiFi driver, and even uninstalling it, and then running the Ds64.exe still results in 14.3.2.1 being installed. I know it really uninstalled it because when I did so, I told it to delete the software so it couldn't decide to reinstall the old driver if it realized that the hardware was there without a driver. So apparently Wireless_15.2.0_Ds64.exe is more than just the WiFi driver, but the WiFi driver alone has not changed. It does behave peculiarly in trying to install the driver: the installer gui seems to stop, but the properties tab shows the new driver installed, but the yellow ! is there in the notification area; I'm not going to give it more than 15 minutes to install a simple driver, so I just reboot, and when I reboot, the driver will be there and functioning. It has been more than a year since the driver installer has ever finished of its own accord: it just sits there with little dots going around in a circle. Once or twice I've let it go for more than an hour, but I'm not going to give it all day and all night.
Since I got hyper-annoyed the other day at Windows and my 2Wire and Netgear (I switch the Netgear and 2Wire out on occasion) and AT&T, and I happened to have an old enet modem on hand, I started using just enet for a while, and discovered the identical problem with the enet driver: it keeps disabling itself. Everything is exactly the same when this happens--no driver is installed on one tab, but the driver is installed, but "enable" is not greyed out. Clicking enable has no effect; it starts doing something and never stops. The network troubleshooter will inevitably reset the local area connection, which, when it actually does it, will fix the problem, as will rebooting. But sometimes the network troubleshooter goes off into la-la land also. Uninstalling and reinstalling the driver fixes it. I tried changing the settings on the power management tab, unchecking turn this device off to save power to see if that helped. I was thinking that because I used to have huge amounts of trouble on this pc when I had Vista on it with sfc being unable to fix corrupt files, which I have yet to find an actual cause of, and which only rarely occurs with Windows 7, but some people have speculated this was due to the computer hibernating or sleeping. Since I don't use either, I don't believe it, but I couldn't help but wonder if whatever it was doing that might be emulating sleeping or hibernating and causing this issue also: however, changing the power setting does not reduce the occurrence of the issue. I've just found a more recent enet driver on the Marvell site, 11.45.4.3, but that has had no effect. I'm keeping the device manage open all the time so that when the internet suddenly slows down I will try to see if the suddenly disabled driver appears before the yellow triangle or not.

I can smell a Mac in my future. I'm beginning to think that going from my Amiga 1000 to a Windows pc long ago was a horrible mistake. It has eaten up months of my life over the years. Could a Mac be worse? At a certain point, one begins to wonder how that consistent a level of malfunctioning could be accidental.

switching to a mac because you had one bad pc issue is like turning gay because you had a bad date with a girl.

seriously though, how do the optional updates look in your update panel?
also the required ones. Some installers will hitch because of issues with the .net framework.
Which is provided through windows update.
I honestly don't know what your problem is exactly as intel wifi is installed in a ridiculous number of computers around the world and we only see problems pop up with them rarely. It actually makes it one of the better ones. It will also likely be the wifi device inside your mac too, just fyi.

The difference between a pc and a mac breaking is the pc can generally be fixed by the user if they persist. Generally when a mac has even a minor problem it's a 100-200 bucks at the counter.

I was sort of joking about the Mac. I had been threatening to get one for years, but having bought an iPhone cured me of thinking that Apple software was superior. You can often never go back in an app, and sometimes you have to reboot to get to the original gui. Groan.... I have every single Windows update, and I even tried repairing Net Framework 4, but that had no effect on the drivers disabling themselves. This happens with the WiFi driver and the enet driver. There is one other driver that is problematic, and that is the ATI graphic driver gives “Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding but has recovered" and has done so for 3 years with every different version of their driver (on Vista and on Windows 7: see Error “Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding but has - Microsoft Answers). I'm thinking about uninstalling NIS 2012 and going with MSE for a while and see if that fixes it: you never know what Norton might be messing with.
Those three drivers have been "driving" me crazy.

I'm not personally a fan of norton, but plenty of people around here swear by it.
If you dig these or any forums on this subject long enough you'll find someone having a serious problem with pretty much every av / security suite there is. MSE tends to be the least problematic, it's not perfect either though.