Device Status - No Driver Installed But Driver IS Installed

Every now and then my WiFi stops working, and if I go to dev mgr, the General tab tells me that "No drivers are installed for this device" for device status. On the other tabs, however, I have all the details on the installed driver, and if I ask Windows to update the driver, it tells me that the best driver is already installed. The problem is solved by rebooting, but I find that annoying. I'd like to figure out WHY it does that. I've saved earlier versions of that particular driver from over the last three years, and the problem occurs with all of the drivers. This is a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit system. The driver is an Intel driver; the one installed at this moment (it just happened again, and I have not rebooted, since I had a powerline enet outlet handy), and the version of the Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN is 14.3.1. I have other versions of that driver saved, from 13.2.1.5 to 15.1.1_Ds64. I had reverted to the 14.3.1 because the more recent versions seemed to be worse about the driver disabling itself or whatever it is doing.Coincidentally with this, the event viewer shows that mmc.exe was terminated because it was hanging. I had just run sfc yesterday, and there are no corrupt files that Windows cannot fix, and there weren't even any corrupt files that it DID fix.