Wireless drivers

[codee21]

I was looking through my installed programs and cleaning up programs I do not need. I found 2 different wireless drivers. Cisco LEAP, Cisco PEAP and Atheros....do I need both of these?

 

[TVeblen]

Atheros is your wireless device driver.

Shamelessly plagiarized from an answer to this question on Yahoo Answers by Synful Vision:

"Those are three authentication technologies for networking.

LEAP Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol, developed by Cisco, it allows for rotating WEP keys for wireless encryption, it's based on MS-CHAP authentication by Microsoft. This is outdated and should not be used unless necessary.

PEAP is a joint venture between Microsoft, Cisco, and RSA for secure TLS tunneling with PKI certificates as authentication.

EAP FAST is the new version of LEAP.

Those are most likely part of your wireless package. If you do not use wireless, you can remove them."
​

 

[codee21]

I just want to make sure that I am clear...I can remove both of the Cisco programs but I need to keep Atheros? All of this was installed just a few days ago which I find strange because I have had my computer since December last year and I didn't install it. I am not quite as technologically advanced as I would like to be. Thanks for your help!

 

[TVeblen]

You need the Atheros driver for your wireless card to work at all. Do not uninstall that.

The LEAP and PEAP stuff is new to me. It sounds from the answer from Synful Vision that you might need these to have wireless also. I've got a couple of laptops here with Atheros drivers and they do not have any LEAP or PEAP stuff.

You could try this:

• Create a System Restore Point.
• Uninstall Leap & Peap and test. (Use "Remove Programs" from the Control Panel. Never just delete the folders.)
• If problems, restore the computer back.

Do you have your Windows Update set to "Automatically Download & Install Updates"?
Personally, I turn that off just to avoid these kinds of issues. If something is installed on my computer I want to do it. I have mine set to Notify me of new updates, but do not download or install them.