wireless adapter not finding network

I am working on a friend’s laptop. Her wireless adapter will state “at least one or more connections are in range” however when you view available networks nothing shows up. I have updated drivers, uninstalled the adapter, restarted wireless zero config service, checked the button to make sure it is turned on, disabled firewall and antivirus, ran fixwinsocket registry fix. I was beginning to blame the hardware so I installed a wireless card which gave the same results.
She took the laptop to a pc shop and they removed the verizon internet security and some other things she is not sure of. Also comcast was attempting to setup her network and she doesn’t know exactly what they may have done.