No network adapter - it's gone

I have a Dell Studio 540. It came with Vista 64 bit over a year ago. In December I upgraded it to Windows 7 Home 64-bit. One of the programs that didn't work when I upgraded was the VPN connection for work. However, when I deleted the program (Juniper) from Control Panel, the next time I tried to login to VPN it upload and connected.

Today they changed the VPN and when I tried to login to the new VPN, it would download the new software but I would get an error when it tried to install.

One thing that the instructions said was that if I got the message about whether the program properly installed to say that it had. However, before I read that, I had already clicked on the option to reinstall with proper settings that you get with 64-bit, because that was what I had to do previously.

In trying to fix it myself, I think I broke something. Hopefully someone can help me fix it. Here's what I did.
Since the system requirements said Windows 7 Enterprise edition, I thought maybe the problem was Windows 7 Home, so I upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate. After I did that, I was still able to be on the internet, but still got the installation error when it tried to install.

Then I thought maybe the problem were remaining entries in the registry because of prior installations. Especially since even after removing from Control Panel, I still wasn't getting that message about reinstalling with proper settings that I should have said no to. So, this is probably where I did a really bad thing. I went into reg edit and deleted all the references to Juniper.

After I did that, I tried logging into VPN, it downloaded, and this time I did get the message about reinstalling with proper settings and I said no, as the instructions said, but I still got the error installing message. So I rebooted.

After the reboot, my computer could no longer connect to the internet. Troubleshooting doesn't find anything, but when I try to add a connection, it can't find any network adapters.

I tried removing and reinstalling the Realtek driver, and i downloaded the most recent version from Dell and tried installing again. There were two files. One seemed to install OK, and the other said there was an error. The one with the error was the Realtek Diagnostic Utility.

Then when i tried reinstalling the driver, I got a message about an incorrect parameter.

So, can anyone help me? Is it possible to fix without a reformat. I sure hope I don't have to do that.

Thanks in advance.

Pam

 

you might need to do a system restore to a point prior to tinkering with the registry. As for helping you with the original problem, I'm not too sure about that. I'm sure someone else has some ideas for you.

 

Juniper SSL VPNs offer a few different types of connectivity: Proxied (or rewritten) web links (called Web Bookmarks), File Bookmarks, Terminal Sessions, WSAM (Windows Secure Application Manager), JSAM (Java Secure Application Manger), and NC (Network Connect). Based upon what you are describing, I'm assuming that you're talking about either WSAM or NC--most likely NC. NC creates a virtual NIC that redirects traffic through an SSL encrypted tunnel to your company's VPN gateway. My recommendation would be to follow up with your company's Juniper System Administrator and find out if the version they are using is compatible with your 64 bit O/S. Many older Juniper software releases were not, depending upon which feature you were utilizing. To get your computer back to a usable state, I'd recommend following Smokingun's advice and rolling back to a System Restore point from before you attempted the uninstall (if at all possible). Your company's Juniper SA should also be able to assist you in troubleshooting--have you tried contacting him or her?

 

Thanks. I'm really more concerned with getting my internet connection back, first, then seeing about the VPN. I was able to get the same VPN working on my laptop, which has Windows 7 Home Edition, so I'm not sure why it didn't work initially with the desktop unless it was some kind of conflict with old versions.

Regarding system restore, I tried that, there is no restore point. I don't know if the upgrade to Ultimate wiped out all the restore points or what, but there isn't one.

 

I tried getting the driver from the Realtek site. That didn't work either. Still get a Failed installation message. I'm wondering if there's a conflict with the Ultimate version of Windows 7 - is that possible/likely? Do I eed to start thinking/planning for reverting to the original image, I wonder?