Vista Shuts Down My Internet Access--Help!

This is such a peculiar problem, that I have completely exhausted my mind trying to fix it. Months of Google searches, and a variety of attempted fixes...

But, I digress.

I have a relatively new Vista machine that for a few months ran as my Home Network hub. I had it hooked up directly to my Linksys WRT54G, and my XP laptops and 2nd XP Desktop all were able to access the network (and the internet via cable modem) with little to no problem.

At one point, however, Vista just decided it didn't want to play with the network anymore, and would literally shut it down. Well, more accurately, it would completely shut down the internet access at random intervals. I took to power cycling my router multiple times per day, and the access would just drop again anywhere from 10-20 minutes later.

I had thought this might be due to my Router going bad, but ultimately, that was NOT the case. In fact, if I leave the Vista machine OFF, the network works fine, and I can access the 'net at will with no problems whatsoever. As soon as it comes on, BANG, no internet.

Well, I recently had a flooding problem in my office, and took the cleanup and re-setup opportunity to go from a direct connection to a wireless connection for the Vista machine, thinking this might help the situation. No dice. I get the same results. Of course, my network worked fine for all of my XP machines until I turned on the stupid Vista machine again.

I've even tried THIS solution:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233

To no avail. I'm at a loss. I considered reinstalling Vista from scratch, but haven't the disk.

At this point, I'm ready to completely reformat the system and install XP onto it. At least I know things will WORK!

Can anyone offer any other advice?

I'm really desperate, because I simply can't run things like this...

I have the same issue Visat Home Premium 32 bit just ceases randomly after a period of time to see the connection to the Internet. Diagnose and Repair finds nothing. The Attansic Ethernet Utility says everything is fine. I can ping my provider at the cmd prompt but no one else. I can't even open the webpage for my router and the other XP computers on my network all continue to operate perfectly fine.

Try these tips from mydigitallife.info

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007 [...] orruption/
To repair and reset the Windows Vista

1. Click on Start button.
2. Type Cmd in the Start Search text box.
3. Press Ctrl-Shift-Enter keyboard shortcut to run Command Prompt
as Administrator. Allow elevation request.
4. Type netsh winsock reset in the Command Prompt shell, and then press the Enter key.
5. Restart the computer.

What netsh winsock reset command does are it resets Winsock Catalog to a clean state or default configuration. It removes all Winsock LSP (Layered Service Providers) previously installed, including the potential malfunctioned LSP that causes loss of network packets transmission failure. So all previously-installed LSPs must be reinstalled. This command does not affect Winsock Name Space Provider entries.

Note: To check which LSPs installed on your Vista system, use netsh winsock show catalog command.

It’s also possible to reset TCP/IP Internet Protocol stack.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007 [...] 03-and-xp/
For Windows Vista, things work a little different due to introduction of UAC (Guide: Disable UAC). Use this guide to perform a reinstalling of TCP/IP protocol in Vista:

1. Click on Start button.
2. Type Cmd in the Start Search text box.
3. Press Ctrl-Shift-Enter keyboard shortcut to run Command Prompt as Administrator. Allow elevation request.
4. Type netsh int ip reset in the Command Prompt shell, and then press the Enter key.
5. Restart the computer.

The command will remove all user configured settings on TCP/IP stack and return it to original default state by rewriting pertinent registry keys that are used by the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) stack to achieve the same result as the removal and the reinstallation of the protocol. The registry keys
affected are:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\

and

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DHCP\Parameters\