where has my nerwork gone?

Been runing a USB external wireless NIC with a wireless router for some time
now with no issues, (you can sense the but coming can't you).....but
recently the machine was booted without the USB NIC attached so windows XP
quite rightly didn't detect any NICs on the machine. However if i now plug
the NIC in...windows sees it as a what it is & installs the correct drivers
but doesn't show the network connection anywhere. No matter what i do i
can't get it to show a NIC attached so i can't check what protocols i'm
using or tweak any IP settings, but strangely i have full network
conectivity.
I have tried unistalling & re-installing drivers...turniing on ever service
i can think off but still can't get the thing to display the wireless
network, i can't even create a new network connection because it doesn't she
a NIC to bind it too

Machine is running windows XP home and is still on SP1, any help or ideas
would be greatly welcomed

thanks in advance