I can't tell from your post whether you have any wireless security on that wireless network. If not, I'm not sure what the issue is. If so, then my guess is that at some point it asked for a password, you put in an incorrect one, and told it to remember it. I have no idea why, but frequently Windows will take the wrong password and not tell you it's wrong. It'll just try to connect to the access point.

However, looking at your post again, I'm guessing that the laptop has one of those horribly annoying third party software wireless connection programs. Those are terrible. Get rid of that ASAP and tell the Windows software to take over. It's possible that removing the software will also remove the driver, though, in which case you might need to connect the laptop directly to the router (wired), and tell Windows update to look for the driver.

I've never seen a 3rd party wireless program that was any good, and didn't result in messed up networking. You're much better off with letting Windows handle it.