[Bill]

I have a six week old Dell Inspiron 9300 runing XP Pro SP2. It has both
an internal 100 mbs network card and an internal 802.11 a/b/g wireless
adapter. Most of the time I use the wireless adapter and have the wired
adapter disabled. Sometimes I disable the wireless adapter and enable
the wired adapter when I have to copy very large files. The last time I
did this was several weeks ago.

Now, when I right click the wireless adapter and choose Disable I get
an error message, "It is not possible to disable the connection at this
time. This connection may be using one or more protocols that do not
support Plug-and-Play, or it may have been initiated by another user or
the system account."

I have no idea what has changed to cause this. I can disable the
wireless adapter in Device Manager but that is a nuisance. How can I
fix this problem so I can once again disable the wireless adapter?

Thanks,
--
_Bill_

[Matt Gibson]

Isn't there a hardware switch on the laptop itself that you can use to shut
off the wireless adapter? I'd be suprised if there wasn't.

Matt Gibson - GSEC

[BigJim]

you may have to reinstall the drivers. BTW look on the hard drive for a
folder called , Drivers,
copy it to a cdr and save it put it in a safe place. These are the drivers
for your specific machine.
It makes it so easy to reinstall everything. The drivers are all unzipped.
Windows XP may not have
all of them, it has some of them. Like I upgraded to xp pro on my inspiron
1100, it didn't have the video drivers, so when xp was finished installing I
put the driver disk in the cd rom drive. I then went to device manager, open
the display adapters and told it to upgrade the drivers. Pointed it at the
driver disk and bang, the video was back.


"Bill" <no@no.com> wrote in message
news:es$byNEbFHA.3280@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>I have a six week old Dell Inspiron 9300 runing XP Pro SP2. It has both
> an internal 100 mbs network card and an internal 802.11 a/b/g wireless
> adapter. Most of the time I use the wireless adapter and have the wired
> adapter disabled. Sometimes I disable the wireless adapter and enable
> the wired adapter when I have to copy very large files. The last time I
> did this was several weeks ago.
>
> Now, when I right click the wireless adapter and choose Disable I get
> an error message, "It is not possible to disable the connection at this
> time. This connection may be using one or more protocols that do not
> support Plug-and-Play, or it may have been initiated by another user or
> the system account."
>
> I have no idea what has changed to cause this. I can disable the
> wireless adapter in Device Manager but that is a nuisance. How can I
> fix this problem so I can once again disable the wireless adapter?
>
> Thanks,
> --
> _Bill_

[John Shaw]

"Matt Gibson" <mattg@blueedgetech.ca> wrote in message
news:eLQjvSEbFHA.3040@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> Isn't there a hardware switch on the laptop itself that you can use to
> shut off the wireless adapter? I'd be suprised if there wasn't.
>
> Matt Gibson - GSEC
>

True, many provide a switch, some are software based through a seperate
utility -- I've encountered this issue with my home system but never had
the time or the inclination to troubleshoot as it's a USB adapter and
unplugging it is as easy as sitting up in my seat and reaching. I'd be
interested in a solution as well... but I recall being able to disable the
adapter at some point in time... perhaps a windows update or some other
software made a change or is preventing the ability to disable the wireless
adapter.

It seems in this case, since Bill can still disable his wired adapter, that
it is an issue specific to a wireless adapter, and it's a problem worth
solving since some laptops do not have a hard switch to disable it. I'd be
interested to know if there is a software utility that came with his laptop
that disables the adapter, and if in fact that works or not... or perhaps
this is grasping at straws... :\

[Lawrence A. Wong]

Assuming you have both an Ethernet port and a built in Wi-Fi adaptor of some
sort, under Network Connections, it will list the different ways your
computer can connect to the internet.

These are usually "Local Area Network" for a Wired connection and "Wireless
Network Connection" for a wireless connection. If you want to disable an
adaptor, just disable the respective connection. It disables the connection
by disabling the adaptor.

--
Regards,

Lawrence Wong
"John Shaw" <anon> wrote in message
news:uu5fdaJbFHA.2736@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
>
> "Matt Gibson" <mattg@blueedgetech.ca> wrote in message
> news:eLQjvSEbFHA.3040@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
>> Isn't there a hardware switch on the laptop itself that you can use to
>> shut off the wireless adapter? I'd be suprised if there wasn't.
>>
>> Matt Gibson - GSEC
>>
>
> True, many provide a switch, some are software based through a seperate
> utility -- I've encountered this issue with my home system but never had
> the time or the inclination to troubleshoot as it's a USB adapter and
> unplugging it is as easy as sitting up in my seat and reaching. I'd be
> interested in a solution as well... but I recall being able to disable the
> adapter at some point in time... perhaps a windows update or some other
> software made a change or is preventing the ability to disable the
> wireless adapter.
>
> It seems in this case, since Bill can still disable his wired adapter,
> that it is an issue specific to a wireless adapter, and it's a problem
> worth solving since some laptops do not have a hard switch to disable it.
> I'd be interested to know if there is a software utility that came with
> his laptop that disables the adapter, and if in fact that works or not...
> or perhaps this is grasping at straws... :\
>