Wireless card woes

Hey, I have a problem that has just about made me throw my laptop out the window.
I have a lenovo v100 0763-C5U and i wanted to upgrade the wireless card from the crappy broadcom to the ever-so beautiful atheros wireless N card (i.e. thinkpad a/b/g/n card). But my windows installation was messed up to the point that device manager was blank (a computer tech with the same install for about a year and a half). So i decided to restore to factory. BAAAAD idea. the restore went fine but the problem that arose is that now neither my broadcom or atheros will turn on. The drivers go in fine and everything is tickety-boo in device manager, but all apps display the adapter (either one) as disabled. I know it isn't the hardware switch on the side because some tests have shown it works and it's state is detected by the system. But any attempt to enable the radio fails.
If i click the "enable radio" button in either access connections, windows zero-config, or any of the adapter client software nothing happens.
over the course of 3 days i've restored twice and wiped the drive completely, installing fresh (and me being the idiot i am, didn't make the restore CDs first) so now i have a laptop that is essentially useless to me without wireless connectivity, and i cannot get the damn wireless card to power on.
P.S. after an hour on the phone with lenovo tech. support, I declare them utterly useless. ex:"theres no way you could have installed the windows with the key on the bottom of your laptop, it is not possible, if you wish to speak to management, there is a 3-day processing time" (i pretty much gave up hope at this point)

 

what key on the bottom of your laptop??

anyhoooo it would be an idea to try to find a driver CD that came with the laptop, if indeed it did. It sounds to me like windows has used it's own drivers for the device when you re installed windows so you need to click in device manager "show hidden devices" it should be in there. then right click and update driver. If this can be done you need to make sure you have the CORRECT drivers from the Atheros or the Broadcom website for your card. Then install the drivers and update them to your relative card. Come back to me with a response and ill see what else to do.

Alienwarez

 

Are the cards being recognized in the Hardware Devices section? If it has a yellow exclamation mark it might be the wrong driver. If the card isn't recognized then that's another story.

 

You can use the MS key to install Windows. When you enter the key you will be prompted to call MS. Once you do they will give you a special key to complete the registration. It common since the key on the dvd does not match the end user liesen.

 

I already installed all the right drivers (downloaded both the latest, and then the original drivers from lenovo) and everything is installed and shown as working correctly in device manager, and thats the frustrating part, everything works perfect with exception of the wireless, which will not power on. Also, what i meant about the windows key is that the guy on the phone said it wasn't possible to re-install windows with a different disc using the liscence on the bottom of my laptop, which i know is B$ cause i do it daily =P

 

Also, i'm sorry for any confusion on my original post, i just realised i had used the wrong type of brackets which made some of my text not show up, its all there now =)

 

bump, any ideas guys?