I have encountered a problem which seemed to have no solution. I was using my laptop earlier online then turned it off. After returning a few hours later I then restarted my system to find that there were no wireless networks to be detected. I found this odd considering I was in a hotel where each floor has it's own wireless network. Normally I would find anywhere between 5-10 networks.

I started to go through everything. I tried the trouble shooter. It told me "Windows Wireless service is not enabled would you like to enable it" or something along those lines. Of course I'd click yes however it would return an error saying it couldn't.

So next I went to the search bar in vista and typed in services.msc and found that the WLAN service was set to "automatic" but wouldn't start. I tried multiple times and kept getting a windows error. To google, and here, I went.

After several hours of searching and reading through some 15+ forums I had tried tons of solutions. Apparently this is something that happens quite often with vista. I wanted to make this post so anyone experiencing this could easily find the solution instead of trying a half dozen other "solutions" that did nothing.

My research led to two solutions.

1. You have a computer virus. Use multiple online programs to find which one you have. After you have found it, cleaned, and removed it use your windows disk to repair windows.

IF YOU DON'T HAVE A VIRUS HAVE NO FEAR. THERE IS NO NEED TO INSTALL ANY PATCHES, RUN ANY "UNAUTHENTIC FIXES" OR GO HUNTING FOR THAT WINDOWS REPAIR DISK!!!!

2. Click on the "start" button then in the search line type 'CMD' minus the quotes. Do not hit enter. With CMD in the search box hold down Ctrl-Shift and press the Enter key. This will bring up a command prompt elevated to Administrative level. Next type the command 'sfc /scannow'. Your system will start doing a self diagnosis. The diagnosis can take up to 10min. At the end you will get a message of everything it has found. Once it is completed go back to the search bar and type 'services.msc'. Once the services window opens scroll down to WLAN Autoconfig, select it, and manually start the service. YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO MANUALLY DO THIS AGAIN UNLESS VISTA CAUSES THIS ERROR IN THE FUTURE!!!

I tried several fixes from download .rar patches off websites to doing regedit. This has fixed it and I have restarted my system multiple times to check. I only hope I can save someone the trouble I went through.