Vista - Network connected but no Internet connection

Hey everyone,

Vista has been working great for about 6 months, networking and everything, but just 2 days ago my internet connection dropped and never came back. I looked into it and I am now connected to an "Unidentified Network" with "Local Only" access. I have tried to fix it for 3 days now and have gotten no where. I've tried everything I've read, though I may have missed something, I have even reinstalled Vista 64x. Any Ideas? Seems like a common vista problem.

When you installed or reinstalled Vista x64, did you also installed the Chipset drivers?

Are there any yellow warning signs under Device Manager?

Are you running a Cable modem?

What about a router? if so... model and brand?

Are you running a Wired or Wireless connection?

I am on a network in college connected by wire and have switched the connections and they work fine on my laptop running XP. I updated the chipset drivers but there is still an "unknown device" driver with a yellow ?. I believe its t# connection. I reset the winsocks.

Hate to bump but I'm just so fed up and need help. =/

what type of motherboard do you have
maybe the intergrated Network Adapter is disabled the in the bios
try and use standard settings for your bios and see what happens

another tipp is that sometimes when the Network Adapter 1gb capable
and the router\switch is not it can cause problem with auto configuration try using a fixed spped on your netowrk adapter

is the network card listed in the device manager

The network card is listed in the device manager, my bios may be out of date, though i dont know why it would suddenly drop my connection now. Also, you say I need to try setting a fixed speed on my network adapter? How would I go about doing that?

go to the start menu and type ncpa.cpl
right click on you network adapter and select properties
under the name of your network adapter is a button that says configure click that
a new window should open up

not knowing what kind network adaper you have look for a setting called speed and duplex or someting of thta nature you might have to click a littel bit to find it when you do try setting it a 10MB/s half or full and if works keeps increasing it until you have the fastest that works

My network adapter is built into my motherboard, it is an Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 PCI-E Ethernet Controller. I'll look into the info u just gave me, thanks a ton, post the results in a bit.

ok, i ran through all the connection speeds, each one reconnected and still unidentified, but I did notice somehting. Right before it recognizes an unidentified network, it says multiple networks. I dont know if that means anything. Any other ideas?