disabling wireless connection

In that little box in the lower right corner of the screen that has lots of
icons, there is one icon that is an image of a computer kind with "radiating"
waves coming out of it. When I click on that, a window pops up that says
"Wireless Network Connection Status". There is a button in that window that
says "Disable". This "Disable" button is not working for me and is in fact
causing a lot of problems. After I click on it, I am unable to close the
"Wireless Network Connection Status" window (i.e. that window is frozen).
Furthermore, when I try to shut down my computer, it does not finish shutting
down, but instead freezes on the page that says "Windows is shutting down"
and I have to power-cycle the machine finally.

I can't figure out what process is displaying the "Wireless Network
Connection Status" window, hence I can't kill it from the Windows Task
Manager or Windows Process Explorer. Does anyone know the name of the process
that is displaying that?

Any insight into why this is happening? My wireless network card is:

Dell Wireless 1490 Dual Band WLAN Mini-Card - Packet Scheduler Miniport

This only happens with my wireless connection...when I use an ethernet
connection, it works fine...

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

Andrew