My SIL's Dell laptop running XP just had a similar problem here. The network couldn't be found and turning it on in Windows resulted in it immediately being turned off.

There's Windows XP's wireless configuration thingy, and the Dell came with an Intel wireless configuration thingy. All the changes had to be made to the Intel software's configuration for it to work. Once I figured that out, and changed the WEP key from 64-bits to 128-bits and re-entered the key, it worked fine.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sony did something similar in an attempt to make things "easier".

Does [link|http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windows.networking.wireless/browse_thread/thread/c50848c4f1d44722/38a662e4bc0b85b6?lnk=st&q=vaio+wireless&rnum=17&hl=en#38a662e4bc0b85b6|this] help a little?

If you need to verify that the hardware's working, a MEPIS or Knoppix or Ubuntu live CD may help.

HTH a bit. Good luck!

Cheers,
Scott.