I don't know why it happens, but you could try using device Manager to
uninstall your network adapter, reboot and let Windows rediscover the
adapter.
Windows Update is notorious for adding "new" drivers for network adapters..
Perhaps the latest one you received isn't quite right for the firmware it's
running.
Hi Sinner,
Thanks for the reply. It's exactly what I did and it somehow solved
it. For now. But it didn't come easily though. Let me tell you what
happened:
When I deleted the device, rebooted and entered the static IPs, Vista
sees 2 networks and refuses to connect. The multiple networks are our
corporate LAN and "Unidentified Network." However when I view the
status of each network from Network and Sharing Center, they're the
same, ie all static IPs are the same. There’s only 1 network! But I
don't know why Vista sees 2 networks when there is only 1. The other
mystery is this: even if View Status from NSC shows the correct IPs,
when I check it through the command line it's different. It also says
DHCP enabled when it's not. They’re just different viewing interfaces
to show the same thing: your IP configuration yet they show different
things. One shows the static IPs as entered, the command line shows
what seems like random IPs but is actually indicative of a DHCP
configuration that has not found a valid IP. A vista bug?
So what I did was to get a new IP for my laptop (Default Gateway,
Subnets, DNS remains the same) from our netads and it seems to working
now. But as for the mysteries as to why Vista behaves as such, they
remain unsolved. Well that’s Vista. I’m thinking of getting a macbook
pro.