I recently got a laptop with windows vista on it. I never had this problem with any of my other laptops with older windows os, but it seems that whenever my cable connection drops then comes back on or I pull the ethernet cord out of my laptop and put it back in, my new laptop won't connect to the internet unless I restart my router (belkin) and cable modem. This is very irritating...is there anyway to make my laptop automatically detect the network connection without restarting the router and modem?

Thanks!

Enable "Automatically Detect Settings" under your "Internet Options" settings.

Internet Explorer >> Tools >> Internet Options >> Connections >> LAN Settings.

Doesn't help, but thanks anyway.