I looked in device manager and there was the device and the driver was showing in the properties. It also said 'device working properly' in properties. I tried enabling it and the little box that popped up said enabled, but it remained grayed out with disabled written underneath it.
This is the exact problem I had. I originally purchased a Netgear PCI wireless adapter. Device manager said the device was working fine, but disabled and wouldn't enable. Took it back to the store and bought the Linksys PCI 600n. Same exact thing with device manager showing the device working properly but disabled and wouldn't enable.
I then called Linksys support and paid for their techs to remotely control my computer and try to get it working and still same thing. Device working properly in Device Manager but disabled and wouldn't enable. They suggested getting the USB version.
I then took the PCI version back and got the WUSB600N v.2, plugged it into the USB slot and after manually installing the drivers, Device Manager showed the device working properly but disabled and wouldn't enable! I was really frustrated at this point.
I'm a tech of 12+ years and I consulted with other techs and with Linksys techs and everybody was saying things from the PCI slot on my mobo being bad to it being a Windows 7 problem to the adapter itself. But I saw other people using this adapter in Windows 7 and the only other option was to re-install Windows 7.
I decided to take one last look through Google before re-installing Windows 7 and I stumbled across a post at the Vista forums where somebody had the same problem as us and they said they uninstalled ZoneAlarm and their adapter just started working. Well I used ZoneAlarm also, so after uninstalling ZoneAlarm and restarting the computer the adapter automatically enabled itself and I was on the network!
I spent 3 days with 3 different adapters trying to figure out this problem and it ended up not being my PCI slot, not being a Windows 7 problem, and not being a driver problem. It was a third-party software problem. ZoneAlarm was taking over the network connections and for some reason not allowing new network adapters to be installed properly. Needless to say, I've since dumped ZoneAlarm. I don't need it anyway as my router has 2 firewalls, plus Windows firewall plus my wireless network is not broadcasting.
Duncan, if your device manager says the device and drivers are working properly, then it most likely is. What is causing the device to be disabled and not enable is some third-party software like ZoneAlarm or some other antivirus/firewall. Even disabling ZoneAlarm wouldn't work. It had to actually be uninstalled. I would uninstall your antivirus and firewall software (not Windows firewall) and try that. If your device still won't enable after a restart, then the only other option would be to reinstall Windows 7 and install the adapter before any other third-party software is installed. That is unless you can uninstall one third-party program at a time to determine which program is causing your adapter to be disabled.
Hope this info helps. Any further questions, feel free to ask.
