No Internet Access

[yak]

I've suddenly lost access to the internet on one of my PC's. It's running XP HE SP1, connected via ethernet to a Buffalo Airstation G54, which connects to a cable modem. My second PC, a laptop that connects to the airstation wirelessly, is unaffected.

When I launch the browser (Moz Firefox 0.8), I get a "page not found" error (similar to what I get when my ISP occasionally has DNS server outages). But when I have DNS issues, I can always connect to the router using its IP address. Now when I try to connect to the router, I get a "connection refused" error message.

I get the same errors with IE.

I've tried deinstalling and reinstalling the NIC adapter (Realtek RTL8139/810X familyPCI Fast Ethernet NIC), and nothing changes. I get a light on the NIC card when I plug the cable into the router. I 've even swapped cables to see if a cable had failed. I've also tried connecting the PC directly to the cable modem.

I ran the lspfix utility but it didn't find any problems with the winsock stack.

When I try to repair the Local Area connection, it fails on trying to renew the IP address.

Hmmmm....

Any thoughts?

Update: It now is hanging when I try to deinstall the NIC card using the device manager.