I have a laptop and I have configured my wireless network. My laptop has a wireless card built in, however when I power off my laptop I have to go to control panel, services, wireless zero and click start every time how do I get this feature to stay on an automatically detect my settings.

You should have some kind of wireless network managing utility for the hardware in your laptop. Once this is running, it should automatically detect the network and connect you (after a one-time setup, of course). Make sure the name of your network is in the list of preferred networks (which should be in there somewhere).

You don't need to run wireless zero config, and I actually DISable it on every computer I work on. WZC will periodically (every 10 minutes or so) drop your connection to look for a "better" one. This wreaks havoc with things like ftp, bittorrent, etc. Here is a link (http://paininthetech.com/2005/10/25/disable-wireless-zero-configuration-in-windows-xp/).

So, see if there is a program to manage your wireless hardware somewhere and run that. If still no joy, please give us some more info (PC manufacturer, windows version, wireless card manufacturer, security software, router info, etc... ) to help you figure this out.

Good Luck,
WallyH

If you have updated your Intel wireless chipset driver then you may have Intel wireless management service taking precedence over the Windows service. Personally I like the Windows Zero Config service, it's simple and does the job.

Edit to add: the Dell wireless drivers do the same thing. Good troubleshooting reading here
Solved: Wireless Zero Configuration issue - Tech Support Guy Forums (http://forums.techguy.org/networking/569022-solved-wireless-zero-configuration-issue.html)