So I inherited a Netgear wireless PCI card and decided to give it a whirl to see if I can cut down on the excessive ethernet wires. I downloaded the latest driver from Netgears website and for some reason decided to also install the Netgear wireless configuration utility. Doing this disabled the Windows Wireless Zero Configuration (WZC). I decided that I didn't like the Netgear wireless configuration program and uninstalled it, but left the driver installed. Doing this didn't reenable the WZC, so I went into services.msc to reenable it, but got the following error: Could not start the Wireless Zero Configuration service on Local Computer. Error 1058: The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. I've tried a few things, such as reinstalling and then reuninstalling the Netgear wireless configuration utility to no avail. I've checked multiple times and the driver is installed and always has been and I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver. My only guess is that the Netgear program left a rogue registry entry that is preventing the WZC from reenabling. Anyone have any troubles similar to this? View attachment 1976
I would suggest a System Restore might be a good idea. It seems to fix some things but not others. I believe the Wireless Zero service should have been automatically restarted when your software was uninstalled, you shouldn't have had to manually try to restart it.
Unfortunately, I turned off System Restore many years ago due to lack of need. So short of a complete reinstall of Windows, are there any other options?
The following link should help you out with your Wireless Zero problem: Turning on Wireless Zero Configuration
After a few weeks of trying everything from the depths of the internet, I just ended up formatting and reinstalling Windows XP. I think it was some weird quirk that could only have been fixed via some obscure registry value.
