Format and clean Win7 install from hard drive?

Now I'm starting to cross into the frustrated category. As searching has revealed, ASUS seems to have no idea what they're doing. Their site only has drivers for Azurewave, which many of their netbooks obviously do have, but some seem to have Ralink as I THINK mine has. Even people with the same model 1015-PEM separately report having one of these two different cards, regardless of the fact that the drivers page only has the AW drivers available. The only reason I believe it's Ralink is due to earlier posts when my network key was only accepted once Windows Update installed the optional "Ralink WLAN 802.11n" update.

So as I mentioned earlier the wireless card had disappeared from Device Manager, leaving me unable to even use the link you provided to identify the hardware. Since, I have done a complete clean re-install, again, simply to get the card back up so I can identify AT LEAST what card I have. Surprise! it wasn't there at all. I re-installed Windows the EXACT same way as before, except now I still have no visible card at all. Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections shows only the LAN.

I checked BIOS to make sure it's enabled. I've installed a few different rouge Ralink drivers I found on the web with searches varying around "asus ralink wlan 802.11n driver," "asus ralink wireless driver," etc..

What's really pushing me to frustrated is that I did the same clean re-install as before, with this time giving me zero visible wireless adapter. What steps would you personally take if someone handed you an ASUS 1015-PEM and said, "tell me what model wireless adapter this has?"

Wireless switch is on, along with wireless LED on front of netbook.

Found the correct Ralink driver from the ASUS site (got very excited) installed it and nothing. Windows 7 is still not recognizing the card as confirmed by the lack thereof in Device Manager.

Gonna pop it open in a bit and take a look at the card itself now. Does it sound like it could be anything else but a hardware issue at this point?

Nope. :/

Alright I see what you did there. You have been trying to install the wrong driver to get the wireless connection. What you have been installing is the driver for cabled connection. Theres another wireless driver to download as well. I've double checked the ASUS website.

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download Eee PC 1015PEM

Please do take note of your windows bit version(32/64) as getting the wrong version driver will be incompatible.

It's puzzling then why the device isn't showing up somewhere in Dev Mgr unless it has an altogether wrong driver and is under System Devices, or other. More likely it is turned off, bad connection or failed/failing.

Do try to force each of the wireless drivers on the Downloads list.