Vista - Networking issues with Vista

Dngrswife has an HP Pavilion DV4 with Vista Home on it. It can not maintain connection with the internet, and I'm not really sure why.

Okay, you guys have heard me complain about this machine messing with the Windows Firewall settings after updating (as in enabling the firewall in part or in whole). I have disabled Windows Firewall completely, and I am still running into problems.

I turned off Windows autoupdate, thinking that it is hanging up trying to access Window Firewall after updating.

I spent an hour this morning trying to get the machine to access the internet via wifi and LAN with little success; and then it miraculously fixed itself.

So here's what I've gathered so far: when connecting, the machine spends an inordinate amount of time "Identifying..."

What is it identifying? The network name? Why does it take ten minutes to figure out the name of the stupid network and that it's a trusted zone? Until it finishes that, the network is restricted to Local Only and I can't hit the 'net.

When plugging into the wired LAN, the machine gets this 'Autoconfiguration iPv4' IP which is nowhere even close to the IP addresses assigned by my DHCP server. It's not going to work!

I know the wireless access point is not the issue here because I can access this site just fine with my laptop at the same time as the Vista machine is ruminating over the network identification.

The DHCP server is on my firewall appliance: Smoothwall Express 3.0 issuing fixed addresses based on the MAC addresses of each of our laptops. Unknown MACs get one of ten addresses.

Once the connection is made and the wife is surfing the 'net (or, more usually, watching Netflix), the connection will go down for no obvious reason and we have to wait another ten minutes or so to restore the connection. I am wondering if this disconnect is due to DHCP lease expiration... does a fixed IP expire?

DHCP is not the problem. The expiration date only applies to machines who have not connected to the network in a specified amount of time--hence the lease.

Also, I'm assuming you have SP2 installed.

And give this a try: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/928233

Okay, so that might bring down the reconnection delay, but why is it kicking offline to begin with?

I had this problem with a Vista laptop once and I never figured it out. Did you try this: http://social.technet.microsoft.com...66-d8d8c19aeec2

Hrm... I'll try that too.

I've already had two people tell me that Win 7 will solve all my problems... I tell them that having an extra $110 would solve a few of my problems, too.