connecting to wireless router after xp reinstall
 

One of the computer's in my house recently went screwy from a power surge. After failing to recover windows, I went in, copied all my personal files I needed to an external hd, and reformatted the harddrive / reinstalled windows xp. I also loaded up service pack 2 from a cd.

So everything is pretty much back to normal, except I'm having trouble getting the wireless connection up and running. I have a Linksys router, which has 3 other computers running fine on it. I also have a USB wireless adapter to connect to the router. If I open the configuration utility for the wireless adapter, I can see the name of my wireless network that I want to join.

But I can't join it. Using the utility, I end up getting some 'cannot find specified wireless access point' error, even though it is in the list. Frankly, the utility is more trouble than its worth: I would like to have windows handle the wireless connection itself like it does on this computer.

The problem is if I go to 'Network Connections' and view properties of the connection, I don't get a 'Wireless Networks' tab like I do on this computer. I don't get the 'View available wireless networks' option either. In fact, I can't really find anything in the control panel to help me connect to a wireless network.

I thought it might have been a service pack 2 issue, but SP2 is installed. I also thought I might have forgotten to install some drivers for the network card since the windows reinstall, but I've checked the device manager and the drivers for both the ethernet connector and the wireless adapter seem fine.

Anyone have any ideas? All the tutorials I see online tell me to go to 'Network Connections -> Properties -> Wireless Networks' but I definitely can't find the 'Wireless Networks' option since reinstalling windows.

Thanks in advance for any help!