Vista networking has just stopped

I'll join the queues of people with Vista networking problems. Mine
is similar, but not resolved by any fixes I can find.

Networking has suddently stopped on the laptop. It says it's
connected to "Unidentified Network", but cannot communicate with
anything on the LAN or the internet.

I have been using my laptop on a home network every day for over 6
month now. I have 2 XP computers on the same network. XP computers
are wired into the router, and laptop is normally wireless, but also
has wired capability which I have used before.

Yesterday, the laptop suddenly stopped being able to connect, on both
wireless and wired networks. It can't connect to internet or see
anything else on the LAN. My 2 other computers are having no
problems.

I have turned everything on/off many times.
I have reconfigured the wireless network settings.
I have deleted both the wireless and wired network devices and let
them auto-reconfigure, and set up the networks.
I have set the registry to turn off the broadcast packets for DHCP.
I have configured a manual IP address for this machine, which allows
it to change "Unidentified Network" to my network name, but still
doesn't allow any connectivity.

There is definitely a DHCP problem here, as the laptop is being
assigned a 169.254. address, and this seems to be the root of the
problem.

With a manual IP address, I can see packets coming in when another
computer tries to ping the laptop, but no packets going out, either in
response to an external ping, or to anything of the laptop itself.

Is there a fix for this?

Is there an explanation why after nearly a year of daily use, it would
suddenly stop working? I don't know whether some of the automatic
updates could cause this, but I have automatic updates on "ask me",
and it has been a couple of weeks since I last let this go ahead. I
do have Norton Antivirus installed, so maybe this did an update and
broke something.

Anyone?

to check to see if this as caused by an update, try a restore point
a day before you lost access. does this resolve the issue?

if yes, install the updates one at a time from WU using custom and
see which one breaks things. I would never use Norton or McAfee
myself (I use NOD32).

On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:38:11 -0800, dea@surfplan.com.au wrote:

>I'll join the queues of people with Vista networking problems. Mine
>is similar, but not resolved by any fixes I can find.
>
>Networking has suddently stopped on the laptop. It says it's
>connected to "Unidentified Network", but cannot communicate with
>anything on the LAN or the internet.
>
>I have been using my laptop on a home network every day for over 6
>month now. I have 2 XP computers on the same network. XP computers
>are wired into the router, and laptop is normally wireless, but also
>has wired capability which I have used before.
>
>Yesterday, the laptop suddenly stopped being able to connect, on both
>wireless and wired networks. It can't connect to internet or see
>anything else on the LAN. My 2 other computers are having no
>problems.
>
>I have turned everything on/off many times.
>I have reconfigured the wireless network settings.
>I have deleted both the wireless and wired network devices and let
>them auto-reconfigure, and set up the networks.
>I have set the registry to turn off the broadcast packets for DHCP.
>I have configured a manual IP address for this machine, which allows
>it to change "Unidentified Network" to my network name, but still
>doesn't allow any connectivity.
>
>There is definitely a DHCP problem here, as the laptop is being
>assigned a 169.254. address, and this seems to be the root of the
>problem.
>
>With a manual IP address, I can see packets coming in when another
>computer tries to ping the laptop, but no packets going out, either in
>response to an external ping, or to anything of the laptop itself.
>
>Is there a fix for this?
>
>Is there an explanation why after nearly a year of daily use, it would
>suddenly stop working? I don't know whether some of the automatic
>updates could cause this, but I have automatic updates on "ask me",
>and it has been a couple of weeks since I last let this go ahead. I
>do have Norton Antivirus installed, so maybe this did an update and
>broke something.
>
>Anyone?
--

Barb Bowman
MS Windows-MVP
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/e...ts/bowman.mspx
http://blogs.digitalmediaphile.com/barb/

Aha ha ha haaa!!! My wife remembered the last thing that happened on
the laptop was a Norton's automatic update. Deinstalled Norton AV,
and all is immediately working again! Off to buy a new AV software
now. I will never use Norton's again. I have McAfee on my other
computers, but I will check out NOD32. Thanks for your suggestion.

that is why I don't recommend Norton. Glad this is resolved for you.
On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:49:02 -0800, dea@surfplan.com.au wrote:

>
>Aha ha ha haaa!!! My wife remembered the last thing that happened on
>the laptop was a Norton's automatic update. Deinstalled Norton AV,
>and all is immediately working again! Off to buy a new AV software
>now. I will never use Norton's again. I have McAfee on my other
>computers, but I will check out NOD32. Thanks for your suggestion.
>
--

Barb Bowman
MS Windows-MVP
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/e...ts/bowman.mspx
http://blogs.digitalmediaphile.com/barb/