Help with internal wireless card on Inspiron 9100 that is not working

newbiemama:

I have a dell inspiron 9100 laptop. I have had it about 2-3 years. I replaced the harddrive a few months ago because of constant error messages about a uncorrectable data error and I couldn't reload my XP Home operating system. (it said the computer itself had newer software and wouldn't let me use my disc) so I put in a new hard drive and reload drivers, etc and put in the software that was on my disc then I updated to service pack 2. It works now except is extra slow and still has occasional error messages and it boots up "weird" every now and then for no reason. What I mean by weird is that I usually boot up to a welcome screen with all of our user names on it and sometimes for no reason whatsoever it comes up to a password screen that none of us put on there and says that a logon ui error occured and has to shut down. However mostly it works ok I suppose-- except for the wireless card.

 The most pressing problem I have now is that  the wireless card doesn't seem to work.

I have been to internet cafes and to other areas where I positively know there was signal and it did not pick it up and after searching for available networks it produces nothing,

 I restarted the machine and went to setup and saw that the wireless card was enabled and still it does not let me connect to any wireless networks in the area and it says there are none there when they are definitely there.

 I have no question marks on my device manager area. I do have the wireless network connection icon in the network connection folder as well as a 1394 connection icon and a local area connection icon. I don't use any of these since I don't know what they are for.

 My operating system is windows xp home edition

 I have an internal wireless minipc card by Broadcom

 I tried fn/f2 to turn on/off

 I have enabled radio

 I have checked device manager for problems

 I have a 100gb hard drive

 I have 256 mb physical memory

 

I went somewhere on some setting to test things on the wireless card and it said to check all and then run tests...the tests all passed except for one that said Memory test.

 

Can anyone help me find out what is wrong here? Could the original hard drive problem I had cause this wireless to quit working?

Thank you for any help you can give me!