I decided to make the jump and upgrade to Vista Home Premium.
So I upgraded an existing machine with a new Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H M/B, 4 GB memory, 1TB Samsung F1 HD103UJ and an E7300 processor.

However when I try to run network and sharing centre I keep getting plug cable into "Local area Connection”, however the Device Manager is showing no fault with onboard card. I have checked that all the other computers and NAS on the network are on the WORKGROUP network.

However when I bypass the Buffalo WBR-G54 router its connects immediately and Vista has been activated so the network card appears OK.

I have turned off the security suite and I have tried manual configuration for TCP/IPv4 and have disconnected TCP/IPv6. Also I have manually configured the router with the MAC addresses. I have reformatted HD and reinstalled Vista and installed latest drivers from Gigabyte.

On one start I have got a network connection. I immediately made a restore point, however on the next restart I was back with no network connection. I used the restore point but I could not get the network connection back.

Solved the problem when I borrowed a router and everything connected. So have gone out and bought a new router.