Okay, here's my story. If anybody has an answer, I will bake you a cookie. My old computer was dying - the motherboard was faulty. I bought a new motherboard, transferred all my hardware from the old one to the new one, and installed a brand new copy of XP Pro SP3 and all the drivers for all my hardware. Everything went smoothly except for my Netgear wireless PCI card. The driver installed fine. I was able to access my home wireless network fine, and I received an IP address from the router. The router showed my MAC address as an attached device. I configured my router, and I hadn't changed anything between old and new computer. But I could not get on the internets. I turned off the firewall, I had no anti-virus at that point, I could not ping the router, or the other two computers on the network, from my computer. I COULD ping the router from the other two machines, one wireless and one hardwired, so it the router wasn't blocking them. I tried pinging the default gateway, tracert, all that stuff, based on suggestions I received from this forum, to no avail. I can't remember the exact outcomes of doing those things, because I did a billion things, but nothing said "Oh, see, this setting, or this piece of hardware, is the problem - go fix it." I got no answers. In my troubleshooting, I: -switched the card between available PCI slots -tried a brand new card -manually configured IP/DNS/etc. To no avail. I didn't hardwire via ethernet, because I'm across the house and I'm trying to avoid making a new cable. But just now, I stuck a stupid USB wireless thing in, installed the drivers, and now I'm online. So I know it can be done. Did I mess up when installing the mobo? Are my PCI slots bad, even though they recognize the hardware, and that hardware communicates with the router? I don't know, man. I am glad I can get online with my machine, but obviously something is wrong with it, and I can't figure it out. Please help! The settings on my PCI card, which doesn't work, are: Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : jcpc Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection 5: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NETGEAR 108 Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter WG311T Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0F-B5-F8-48-1E Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.2 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Thursday, October 15, 2009 8:07:18 PM Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, January 18, 2038 8:14:07 PM The settings for the USB adapter, which DOES work, are these: Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : jcpc Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection 6: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . :SMC2862W-GEZ Connect g 2.4Ghz 802.1 1g Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-04-E2-EB-D7-3A Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.5 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Thursday, October 15, 2009 8:09:13 PM Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Friday, October 16, 2009 8:09:09 PM Can anybody help?

The ipconfig readings look fine. The only anomaly I can see is that the Netgear adaptor is getting a lease time way into the future while the USB adaptor is only getting a 24 hour lease time. As it is the router that determines the lease time it seems a bit strange that both adaptors are getting completely different lease times. This would suggest that the two different adaptors are connecting to two different routers although the IP addresses would suggest otherwise. It could be that you have a neighbour that is using the same base address in their router as you are which is quite possible. Try changing the base address in the router from 192.168.3.1 to something like 192.168.5.1 and change the DHCP scope and see what happens, A bit of a wild shot but I cant see anything else it could be. Stuart