Internet Connectivity Problems

[RKelly]

I am having trouble connecting my sister's laptop to the Internet (wired or wireless). Here's the sequence of events

The other day my sister's laptop stopped communicating with her printer (or vice-versa) I'm not really sure what happened there. She has a wireless DSL connection at her office, so I was trying to find a fix online (HP Printer, thought maybe she needed an updated driver or something). I was in the process of dl a rather large program install from hp's website but I had to get back to work ASAP. Nobody was in her office, so I put the laptop in sleep mode and figured it would autoresume the next time she got in the office.

It turns out now she can't connect to her network, my dad's network, or my network. She has left the laptop with me to try to fix, and now I turn to this community to help me out.

I tried a couple basic troubleshooting options in Vista (including ConfigFree) but have had no luck. I am not able to connect to my network by ethernet cable or wireless.

At this point I'm not really sure what to do. Is it possible the printer connection problem is related to the internet connection problem? I'm certainly no expert on this so I appreciate the help!

Specs: toshiba laptop pentium dual core, vista basic

[zoobie]

system restore?

[RKelly]

thanks for the suggestion. I restored to a point 5 days ago that didn't seem to do the trick. Maybe I'll try even further back. Any other ideas?

[Krispy Kritter]

Could be any number of things, including a virus.

I would start by ensuring all of the network adapters are still recognized and active/enabled. If nothing else, you may try removing/deleting them, reboot, and then set them up after the drivers are reinstalled by the OS.

Now would also be a good time to run Adaware and/or SpyBot Search & Destroy to check for infections.

[Nelson37]

The printer that suddenly failed, how was it connected? USB? Tested printer with another PC, or have you tested the laptop's USB with another USB device of any kind?

ConfigFree is a Toshiba software, other than the signal strength display not much use for it.

Test USB both ways to isolate that failure. Downloading a new driver was a mistake, they don't usually stop working once successfully installed. I would have proceeded directly to testing both ends of the USB connection.

Now if the printer is wireless ethernet, then the answer gets pretty obvious.

You are CERTAIN you have tested a hard-wired Ethernet connection, and you can not communicate with the router or modem or get a ping test result? Nothing at all?

It was working right up till it went into sleep mode during a remote control session? Now it boots but no Ethernet of any kind? I would look to make sure all the sessions are closed, might be some restrictions in place from the suspended session, though I have no experience with Vista in this regard.