My wireless set up is like this one: desktop and one laptop hooked up to a router that goes into the cable modem. The router is set up to dhcp so i get wireless on my laptop fine. I Live in an apt, but it all started when I uninstalled the drivers for my wireless card in the laptop, reinstalled the latest wireless drivers from the dell website. And wireless still worked but in the network places I would see "Local Area Connection" which is disabled (I only enabled it when i hardwired to the cat5) and the "Wireless Network Connection 2" (status : connected) this is the one I'm using for the wireless. I'm confused about the "2" why is there a "2"?. I never had that before. Before it would say the same thing but without the "2"
note: before uninstalling the drivers I updated the bios and then updated the wireless nic. Could it be that someone is using my Wireless Network connection 1?

registry keeps all network entries and enumerates the newest one a number higher hence your #2

Nothing to be concerned about.

Imagine the power of knowing how to internet search
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html

This is a windows feature :-)
I hate it, when this happens.

So the problem is, that windows has stored configuration informations for your WLAN adapter twice in the registry.
And windows uses a part of both configurations for your WLAN adapter.
That causes the adapter to connect to your wireless router but did not work.

So what I have done is, I opened REGEDIT and searched for "Wireless Network Connection".
"Wireless Network Connection" and "Wireless Network Connection 2" will be found.
I deleted all entries found by the search funktion.

E.g.:
If one was found in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\{333FA72F-4CB2-4417-B0D1-5DFF0E0E751C}\Connection
I deleted the whole {333FA72F-4CB2-4417-B0D1-5DFF0E0E751C} entrie.
After that restart the computer.
A new "Wireless Network Connection" will be created automatically.
You maybe have to reconfigure the wireless connection (encryption aso.) but it works.

BE CAREFUL BY EDITING THE REGISTRY AND
ONLY DELETE THINGS, IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING.