Prior to reading all of your posts, I went through almost all of the steps in that article on support.microsoft.com that has been posted (825826), to no avail. I've even done all of the things you all suggested that weren't listed in said article (such as uninstalling network cards in Safe Mode, or changing the Network Connections in Services to "Automatic").
Still have the same problem: My Network Connections icons are all missing, and I have no internet connection. I've even tried rolling back to a previous restore point. I've installed Windows and nVidia versions of the nVidia chipset NICs that I have. Still, same problem.
It seems like I'm doomed to a fresh reinstall of Windows.
