Missing Local Area Connection

In the Network & Sharing Center's "Change Adapter Settings," there are usually Local Area Connection (wired) and Wireless Network Connection.

For as long as I can remember, my computer (and I'm not sure why) has had Local Area Connection, Local Area Connection 2 (Network cable unplugged), Wireless Network Connection, and Wireless Network Connection 2 (Not connected)

Here's the background story. I always used Wireless connections. There's no problem with that now, I can connect fine. I recently connected my XBOX 360 through my Dell Inspiron's port (by allowing other computers to connect through my Local Area Connection).
For the first few days it worked fine, without problems. I came home yesterday to find there was no connection through to my XBOX 360.


Here's the problem. I found that in the Network & Sharing Center's Network Connections, my Local Area Connection is nowhere to be found. My LAC2, WNC, and WNC2 are still there. I have checked my Device Manager to see if my LAC was disabled, I have also been looking around forums and such-like to find anything to help, please let me know.

Thanks,
Vic

You should first try going into Device Manager and disable the connections that aren't being used, especially the Msoft virtual wifi miniport which tends to cause connection problems when it's enabled but not being used.

I'm not sure what happened to your local area connection but shared connections aren't something that I would call reliable as you have found out.

It worked fine. The Local Area Connection came back, but then my Wireless Network Connection stopped working. I couldn't connect to the internet at all, until I did a system restore. After the SR, all of my network adapters go missing, yet I can still browse the web.

Any idea what's going on? Do you think it's a virus? I wouldn't doubt it, before I could perform a system restore, I had to schedule a disk clean for my hard drive (kinda weird, yeah?) and restart my computer. That's when I got the system restore going, shortly followed by missing adapters and a somehow stable connection.

Jazzhands808 said:

It worked fine. The Local Area Connection came back, but then my Wireless Network Connection stopped working. I couldn't connect to the internet at all, until I did a system restore. After the SR, all of my network adapters go missing, yet I can still browse the web.

Any idea what's going on? Do you think it's a virus? I wouldn't doubt it, before I could perform a system restore, I had to schedule a disk clean for my hard drive (kinda weird, yeah?) and restart my computer. That's when I got the system restore going, shortly followed by missing adapters and a somehow stable connection.

Something strange is going on here. Disabling the Msoft virtual wifi and the Broadcom virtual adaptor should have had no effect on the functionality of the wireless connection.

You might want to check in Device Manager to see if those connections show up there.

Have you tried running the sfc/scannow command to see if any system files have been corrupted?

The connections show up in the device manager. I tried to run sfc /scannow but I get back, You must be an administrator running a console session, etc.
So either I'm screwed, or I don't know what I'm doing? I'm the only administrator on my computer. I'm able to run most things as an admin but this is just not letting me through.

Jazzhands808 said:

The connections show up in the device manager. I tried to run sfc /scannow but I get back, You must be an administrator running a console session, etc.
So either I'm screwed, or I don't know what I'm doing? I'm the only administrator on my computer. I'm able to run most things as an admin but this is just not letting me through.

You need to run the sfc/scannow command as Admin, the link below shows you how. :)

SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker

So, I scanned three times. Still didn't work, so I did a system restore for the earliest date available. Same thing shows up (same things don't show up).I appreciate your help though, really.

I thought of accessing the BIOS to see if I could enable the adapters or something from there, but my laptop screen is broken (Inspirons, apparently happens all the time) and I'm using an external monitor. I know it won't show anything like that through the external monitor unless it was the primary... any thoughts?