Connection problems

The machine has been connecting fine, then one day it decides not to anymore. All other machines, wired or wireless, are fine. It is a secure network. Win 7 Pro, fully up to date.

I can't open Networking and Sharing. It doesn't matter where i try to open it from. The icon on the toolbar bottom right shows a little blue dot, and when you hover the pointer, it won't pop up that it has "no internet". I can't see any other machines on the network, but i can see and write to my nas drive, but only if i select it from "My Computer", where it shows up as a mapped drive. If I select "network" from file manager, it just trundles away, moves the bar across the top, but never opens the network, never even gives an error message. Occasionally i get an error message that says "server busy" and states that i must return to the current operation. I can't close this, my only choices being "switch" and "retry". If, after attempting to open "network and sharing", i open task manager, I see it there running, and can close it, same with that error msg, its the only way i can make it go away.

I've never run into something quite like this before. The machine appears to work normally otherwise. Can run a non-connected game, write a document, whatever. The only other thing that happened at the same time: when i first noted the issue, I rebooted the machine, only to get "can't find boot manager, press whatever to restart" I solved this by pulling out the readyboot stick. After rebooting, I reinserted the stick and its booted fine ever since, connection issues not withstanding, without any changes to it. Very curious indeed!

I was preparing to blow the whole thing out and start over, but having read about your repair install procedure, i'd like to try it. The only thing that concerns me is the part where it says it will want to connect and download updates before it proceeds. I don't think it will connect, or maybe with the repair disk, it will, I don't know.

So I would love input on any or all of the above subjects and am grateful in advance for whatever is offered. zz03

thanks Matt. What about the update downloading? Is there a way to update the iso before beginning the install, or just let the repair install happen and update to sp1 and all the rest after?