Thank you to all that gave suggestions. And thank you to Derek for the BIOS
upgrade suggestion. I did not think of that, but it does make sense to
consider that aspect. I do have an update in case it may help others.

I was about to take the computer back to Sony for possible exchange, but
decided that they would want to have it restored to factory settings. With
that in mind, I backed up all the data and did a clean restore to original
condition. Then, step by cautions step I enabled the wireless and other
features as needed. In the end my daughter now has a working wireless
connection! It would have been nice to know what exactly caused the problem,
but it appears to be some sort of corruption in the Windows 7 drivers and
wireless settings.

Based on the intermittent loss of wireless, I suspect that a neighbor's
cordless phone must have contributed to the problem. Although the computer
does work now, it still is not as robust in the wireless speed as is the
older Sony Vaio Z that my daughter also has. Searching the Internet, it
seems that the Intel Centrino 6230 chipset has a lot of problems of the sort
that my daughter experienced, and it is not restricted to Sony but to any
computer that uses that chipset for wireless networking. I did buy a USB
wireless adaptor, but got the internal one going before the adaptor arrived.
So now we have an alternate to try if problems pop up again!

Peter Shkabara
--------------------------
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-----Original Message-----
From: Derek Buchanan [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 

    Have you checked Sony's website for a bios update by chance?  I worked
at a place that was a fan of Dell and the Model D610 laptop had such an
issue.  It would not pickup a wireless signal at times even with several
reboots.  It would appear to be random.  Later on I found a bios 

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