Acer Aspire 7551 Laptop Have No Networking Hardware?

I am having an insane amount of trouble with my Acer Aspire laptop that was working correctly until all the sudden the wireless went out stating that there is 'no networking hardware'I'm not sure what could cause this but two new things happened the night it went out.1. I bought a wireless signal for my desktop (I read somewhere in the Windows help files that the signal could knock out others I think it's silly but who knows)2. I bought a new mouse, tried to install it only to find that numerous people could not find the hardware for it. It went from lit up with no hardware found, nonfunctional. To not lit up but the computer still tried to install the software, no good. I feel like this problem is mainly associated with a cheap mouse because I wasn't the only one who could not install it.Those are the only two new things to happen to this laptop in the 24 hour period it went from functioning to no wireless hardware what so ever. My router is 2 feet away. I have tried removing the battery and disconnecting it from the wall, have tried turning off the signal, then on again. I have also restored my computer twice, back to a time earlier in the day when it didn't do the most recent windows update.And nothing. I don't want to say the internal hardware somehow fried but something went wrong somewhere.What is some steps I can do to try to test or fix this problem? Because Windows 7 help doesn't even acknowledge that this could happen at all nor does it say there is anything wrong with any of the devices on the laptop.Some information about the laptop:Windows 7, Service Pack 1Acer Aspire 7551AMD Phenom II N970 Quad-Core processor 2.20Ghz4G of useable RAM64 bit OSWireless Adapter: Atheros AR5B97Please note that I have also tired to hardwire this computer to my router and it would still not register that it has an internet connection nor would windows detect there was any problem with this at all.EDIT:I downloaded the drivers from the Atheros website and put them on a USB drive from my desktop. Upon putting in the drive to the laptop I found NONE of the USB drives are working. What now?