Windows 7: Laptop cannot connect to either wireless or wired networks

Hello,
I have had a Acer Aspire 5742-6814 for a month or so now. Yesterday it suddenly would not connect to the wireless network in my apartment and won't connect to a wired network either. It says that the wireless drivers are up to date and it just stopped working out of nowhere. I tried connecting to my school wireless network and that would not work either. I have tried some of the solutions that I have seen including:

• Resetting modem in apartment.
• Checking "Connect even if network is not broadcasting its name (SSID)" (which seemed to work for some people with similar problems).

I really have no idea what is wrong or if it some kind of hardware issue. I can provide any further details. Any help that could be given will be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to SF,

What type of Security or Firewall Software do you have installed - Norton, McAfee etc...?

Check your browser settings for any proxy servers, remove it if found.
How to Remove a Proxy Server | eHow.com

Verify that all your Network Services are Started.
Click on Start, type services.msc then press enter.
• COM+ Event System (for WZC issues)
• Computer Browser
• DHCP Client
• DNS Client
• Network Connections
• Network Location Awareness
• Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
• Server
• TCP/IP Netbios helper
• Wireless Zero Configuration ( XP wireless configurations only)
• WLAN AutoConfig ( Vista wireless configurations only)
• Workstation

Please post an update of your progress.

2xg,

I have Webroot Internet Security. I talked with Acer, since I am still under limited warranty, after telling me to try what I had already done, they told me to go into Safe Mode with Networking and see if I could connect. I still couldn't. So they told me that the next step was to go to a restore point a week or so ago, which I had already tried. So finally they told me I would have to restore to factory default settings.

This seems to have worked, for now. Unfortunately, I had ants in my pants and wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, since I need it for various purposes, so I didn't have a chance to try what you said before performing the reset. I will go through now however and make sure that everything is in order.

The reset seems to have worked, so I assume that it was not a hardware problem, but unfortunately I am not really sure what was the real problem since I just dropped a big bomb on it.

If a factory reset fixed it that would suggest a program you had installed, normally antivirus or spyware tool or registry repair had damaged removed or blocked a critical system file or service needed to network

having said that a factory reset can fix or remove malware so thats a possibility ?

dont use registry cleaners and only install one single trusted AV with windows firewall should suffice

Thanks for letting us know that the factory reset resolved your issue.