Internet disappearded in Vista

I'm having a bit of an issue in Vista (x64 ultimate, first problem I've had :/ ) and it appears to be running in some sort of kerrazy offline mode, or something quite fundamental to networking has gone borked. As Vista was booting up yesterday evening, I switched on an external hdd, which it seemed to hate, hanged and required a hard reset (which is the only thing that I can link to this problem)

Vista reckons it has internet connectivity, and doesn't think there is anything wrong when I use the "repair", however any internet enabled application seems to be acting up. For instance, when I start firefox, blank page. Typing in any URL (even my router and locally hosted pages) results in a blank page (not even a looking... looking... no page found type thing) and when firefox is closed, it crashes. Subsequently, when sending an error report, it tells me it will send it "next time you go online".

All seems normal with windows firewall et al, nothing has been kicked into "paranoid mode", nod32 scan comes back clean. No internet in safe mode either. Everything else is working as per normal. Needless to say everything else in the house (microwave, coffee grinder, etc) can get on the internet without any issues.

Being relatively new to Vista, I'm having trouble figuring out just what on earth has gone wrong, any suggestions?

 

Can it ping things? ftp? telnet? (just to see if it is http that is failing)

do both IE and FF give the same "going nowhere" attitude?
Checked your default gateway is correct? (could have changed?)

 

no connectivity at all, no reply from local IPs, let alone external ones
default gateway is the same, both IE and FF hate me

 

Just got home and fired up the pc, now im getting a reply from some external IPs, getting a reply from the router, but still zero connectivity in any and all apps

 

I've got no idea what's going on but have you tried reinstalling some drivers? Perhaps a clash between your external drive and your ethernet drivers?

 

Network and connections settings -> view status on your connection -> diagnose

What do you get?

 

get the same problem on two different network cards, and the onboard wireless as well

The official word from windows "Windows did not find any problems with your Internet connection"
delightful

When windows starts up, live messenger dies - "live messenger has stopped working, click to close the program" and get the same message when firefox is closed down. When there definitely isn't any network connectivity (ie, the cable is pulled) firefox correctly identifies that it cant find anything, but when its plugged in it just draws a blank

Just noticed I can now get to local shared drives/printers as well, but still no external access

edit: and nslookup can find anything too, this is just silly :/

 

Done a Vista repair from teh boot cd? The graphical one where it checks for corrupted binaries.

PS: Plugging in a device on boot completely FUBARs microsofts drivers because it sends an interrupt along the PCI bus which Microsoft haven't taken into account very well unfortunately due to the large amount of interrupts it sends to and from PCI devices to check they are working right.

 

not done a repair, and I'm reluctant to. Its not a far cry from reinstalling, but I feel I may be forced to

edit: pah, the Vista ISO is on the main PC, and I've lost Nero, ffs
and another: I should point out that its a legal ISO, for any clever pants that come along telling me of for piracy

 

it was nod32 of all things, uninstalled and everything is fine (Vista x64 compatible, right)

what's odd is that everything has been absolutely fine for three weeks, until yesterday (apparently it had nothing to do with the bootup failing when I switched on the external dive)

And what else is odd, I've just reinstalled it, and all is well