This is a crazy problem that probably has a simple solution. Any help I can get will be appreciated. I connect to the internet via w-fi. I just acquired a used computer (vista, athlon 64). The previous user used firefox. Firefox and AVG update connect to the internet perfectly. IE7, windows update and yahoo im don't see the internet connection at all, and vista diagnostics says nothing is wrong with the connection. What's going on?

As a thought, does the computer have Vista SP1 installed? I know SP1 is supposed to have some network fixes in it. You should be able to download SP1 from microsoft.com through firefox.

Thanks for the advice. I'll try the service pack. I solved the problem using brute force. I have another computer also running ie7 with vista. I copied all the "advanced" ie7 settings from the working setup to the one not working and lo ie7 connected to the network! Even more striking - yahoo messenger also connected. I don't know what made the difference, but I'm happy.

Well, it might have just been the settings corrupted or something like that. Either way SP1 for Vista has some helpful fixes and (according to Microsoft) now installs properly.