Cannot access internet from router on laptop with fresh OS install (Vista)

[Vinny]

I just did a fresh OS install of Vista on my laptop (bought it from Dell with Vista to give it a go, vista sucks, but thats another story).

I couldn't find my OS discs for some reason at home, so I went to my brother and sister-in-law's place and used theres. They have vista home basic same as myself. booted up fine, no problems. I connect the LAN from their PC to my laptop to DL some stuff, firefox, AVG, Xvid, things like that. everything worked smoothly.

I brought the laptop into work with me today. I plugged it into the exact same LAN line coming off of our router that I've used for probably 6 months since I bought it. I can view enough of the "network" (we only have one computer in the office) to see the name of the router, but I cannot access the internet no matter what I do. I've changed every setting I can think of in Vista to recognize the router, but I must be missing something.

Now mind you, out of the box this laptop (dell inspirion) worked perfectly in the office accessing the net and what not, now that I did the fresh install of vista it is not.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!!!

~V

[Vinny]

Also, I just tried the second LAN (btw I am referring to ethernet cable, I just always call it LAN cable) line that runs from the router to the desktop in the office, thinking possibly the cable went bad... nope. Still won't connect. It's stuck on "Identifying" and "Local Access Only"

As I said, I plugged in the laptop to my brother-in-law's router last night at his house and no problems at all. instant connection as always, so I don't THINK it's a hardware issue, the card has to be good if it worked last night.

And again, I've plugged this laptop into this cable on this router (at work) literally 50x in the past 6 months with no issue, but this is a fresh OS install, but I never had to put software on it before. It's not a wireless router, just the router with the cable broadband coming in and our two LAN lines coming out.

ugh. any suggestions would be great! I'm none too happy with this laptop, its bad enough it has Vista on it.

~V

[glc]

Why did you reinstall from disk? Use the recovery partition, press Ctrl+F11 on startup.

[Vinny]

short version, i despise windows, and that's putting it mildly. so i ordered a ubuntu disk, loaded it, and even though I'm pretty savvy with computers, I just could not get it to work fluidly. drivers wouldn't install, flash for one wouldn't install and 90% of the web browsing I do involves flash. so i decided to throw vista back on the laptop (as it is just a secondary machine, really just for mobile web surfing/dvd watching/word processing) and this is when the trouble started.

i booted up Vista on an unpartitioned HDD... was this a mistake? I deleted the partition that was there because I got an error on trying to boot up Vista saying it wouldn't allow it, even trying to format gave an error. so i deleted the partition and just loaded up Vista on the HDD.

Should I start over?

As I have zero things saved on the drive except DL'd programs (antivirus and such) I have no problem reloading Vista.

one problem is again I don't have all my discs, and a problem I came across was that powerDVD, the dvd viewing software from dell, doesn't seem to be working. I only tried one DVD though, going to try more later tonight, but I never had a single problem with that software before I loaded ubuntu. not that its ubuntu's fault just coincidence I imagine. I used by in-laws disc because he happens to have a dell as well.

I'm thinking of calling dell and seeing what they can do as far as warranty work, check out the box hardware and software. its just acting very odd.

~V

[glc]

You burned a lot of bridges by removing the recovery partition. You now need a complete Dell reinstallation kit including drivers and utilities.