[MLB-WIRELESS] [OT] Vista desktop can no longer connect to Internet via Netgear CGD24N cable gateway

[Michael Borthwick]

I hope you'll pardon the off topic post.

At a client site an on Friday a 3 year old Acer Aspire M1610 desktop  
running Vista was working fine and on Monday morning was unable to  
connect to the Internet.

Specifically it does not get a lease from the cable modem router  
whether set to "obtain in IP address automatically" or when manually  
set within the range of addresses the router allocates by default  
(which is the entire 192.168.0.x subnet).

I have tried all the rubbish posted online about Vista networking such  
as:

In Device Manager under Network Address for the NIC putting in its  
actually MAC address as reported by ipcofig as this defaults to  
000000000000 supposedly preventing the machine from ever getting a  
lease (if this was true no Vista PC would have ever been successfully  
connected to the Internet)...

Turned off IPv6 networking as I read this can interfere with  
IPv4 ... ;-)

I have deleted and reinstalled the drivers from the Acer Australia  
website for the Sis191 onboard NIC thereby created two non-functional  
Ethernet devices in device manager.

I have put the PC NIC on a 10.10.0.x subnet connected to eth3 of a  
MicroTik RouterBOARD 532 and put eth2 of the MicroTik on the cable  
modem routers 192.168.0.x subnet and created a route between them. The  
MicroTik gets a lease but the PC still cannot connect to the Internet  
(it still shows up as unidentified network) although the PC can ping  
the router at 192.168.0.1

I have reset the cable modem router to factory defaults in case it has  
stored some kind of exception to the MAC of the PC even though I was  
cloaking this behind the RouterBOARD

Whirlpool says that the Netgear CGD24N is a bjorked device especially  
for a small business (there are around a dozen wired clients on a  
Cisco switch) and up to half-a-dozen iOS devices at various times. It  
does need to be reset a lot - however after a return to factory  
defaults it is hard to believe it can be fault and all other wired and  
wireless devices are OK, at least for the time being.

I've exhausted my trouble-shooting abilities - particularly on the  
Windows side. Is there some other layer in the Windows OS that could  
be holding it down ? I really don't know where else to look or what to  
try.
At this stage I'm considering.
1. Buyng a new NIC even though the built in one seems fine from a  
hardware POV to see if the "unblocks" it.
2. Reinstall Vista from the backup image on the HD.

Sorry for the long winded OT post.

Cheers,

Mike