Broadband forum: Internet connection lost

...or what was being done on the computer just before the crash*, or do you know what caused the crash* ?

* : "Crash" is a word used too much. What is a "crash" ? Please describe what happened, so we can determine what type of problem it is...

Re the crash, Task Manager froze up and wouldnt budge, so she shut down and restarted with normal boot other than the fact that the connection was gone.

Re going around the router ... can try but keep in mind that my computer is wired directly to the same router and is working fine, and hers did too until this incident.

Dont know why it froze up. She had opened it earlier for some reason and left it open for a period of time. When she tried to close it, it hung up for reasons unknown and froze. Not sure how it can relate to the problem, but will consider anything at this point.

Ipconfig/release ... resulted in The operation failed as no adapter is in the state permissible for this operation Note that we have tried this both with the new NIC and the original and both after numerous re-installs of the drivers (which were, until last week, working with the original ethernet).

Traceert 127.0.0.1 resulted in Tracking route to ******* over a max of 30 hops ... 1 <1ms <img <1ms ***** [127.0.0.1] ... Trace Complete

Ping 127.0.0.1 .. 4 packets sent .. 4 recd .. 0 lost

We disabled IPV6 early in the process to eliminate that possibility.

Result of connect attempt: Windows cannot find any networks
(In Local Area Connections, we have 2 installed - 1 enabled and 1 disabled)

Note: She had opened the Task Manager a period of time before it froze probably to check on downloads (as she recalls). It was left running for a period of time, when she got back to what she was doing and tried to close it. The TM on my machine has done the same thing from time to time, with no ill effect other than the temporary freeze.

Ipconfig/all results in no info being displayed at all. The lines starting at (on my machine) Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection are completely missing.

Pinged 192.168.1.1 (routers address) and got transmit failed error code 1231".

We have a router with an internal modem and have tried all of the sockets with both computers and have switched cables between the two. Mine works fine in all cases - hers doesnt work anywhere.

1231 is a Vista error code, but not necessarily a diagnosis of a Vista problem. It covers too wide a field of possible problems to be much of a clue, from what I can see.

At this point, we have no LAN, which would seem to be essential to changing the IP/TCP config or dealing with the DHCP.

I had assumed that a LAN shows up pretty much automatically when the machine loads the correct NIC drivers and recognizes the NIC, but apparently this isnt always the case. Device manager shows both the original onboard and newly purchased NIC to be functioning fine, and we have re-installed the drivers for each many times. So, on a hardware level, the devices are working and recognized, but on a functional level, theyre not there, and the computer cannot find or use them to establish a LAN. As I mentioned earlier, the ipconfig/all shows absolutely nothing having to do with the card itself - its completely missing.

In researching this thing, I cannot find anyone else who has ever run into this exact situation, so were running out of options. Could try a Vista fresh install, but Im wondering how thats different from going back to a restore point, which weve already done. Could this be mobo damage? I just dont know what else to try.

Apparently, well never know the exact details of what the problem was. After exhausting all other options, we re-installed Vista, and all was back to normal. Going back to a restore date didnt help at all, but this did. Itsa mystery, but prolly one not worth trying to figure out.