Could a bad wireless card work for wi-fi but not for networking?

To start, these threads:

• Laptop can no longer access shared printer/files on home network
• It's not the printer, it's the network (Error code 0x80070035)
• Error code 0x80070035 redux, and I am getting battier by the minute

cover the long background of my problem - that a Win7 laptop in my house cannot access other computers on the network, or a USB printer connected to one of those computers. And the problem just appeared all of a sudden (albeit, 2+ years ago). And every other computer in the house - XP, Win7, MacOS - can network and print fine.


Today I finally brought the laptop into the shop to see if they could do anything for me.


The tech took a look at it, said that he could find nothing wrong, and offered two theories.


One is that he could come to my house and try to troubleshoot it in its "native environment." This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since I really don't know anything magic he could try or see at home, that he'd not see elsewhere.


The other was the thought that maybe the laptop's wireless card was bad. "I've seen it happen," he said, where a wireless card goes partially bad, retaining some functionality but losing others.


How likely is this? That the laptop would have perfect wifi and internet connectivity for 2+ years, but no networking capability with other hardware in the house. 100% "all or nothing" - doesn't make sense to me.

strollin said:

Why don't you borrow or buy one of those inexpensive USB wifi adapters and see it it works then? At least that will answer the question for you.

Yes, what we used to call "the Okie Sun Tester". Easy enough to try, and I would, but I doubt that's it.

I've read thru your threads (wow!) and I would have wiped the machine years ago. I don't claim to be an expert, but I've chased a lot of this kind of problem. I'm not sure if I just missed these things, so I'll suggest them.

Make sure that the Workgroup (not Homegroup) of the problem machine is the same as the printer host. Go so far as to join it to another Workgroup and then rejoin the correct Workgroup. As I'm sure you've discovered, Homegroups don't work in a mixed 7/XP environment.

Reset the tcp/ip stack. I saw where you mentioned it but I didn't see where you actually did.

1. To open a command prompt, click Start and then type cmd in the Search programs and files box.
2. Under Programs, right-click the CMD.exe icon, and then click Run as administrator.
3. When the User Account Control box appears, click Yes.
4. At the command prompt, enter the following command, and then press Enter:netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt