Any idea why this keeps happening? (Internet Connectivity)

Recently I came here for help with an internet connectivity issue I was having. Here's the thread:

No Internet Access After Restore

I designated it as "solved," because it was. But unfortunately this same issue is recurring. I've had to go back and run Nihal's advice again twice now. The problem reappears on boot-up, but not always. So there's still something amiss somewhere in my system. Any ideas what or where it might be?

Thanks for your response, Nihal. I had two items in my machine's Startup folder: Dropbox and a program for a plug-in wireless adapter that I use sometimes. Really, I don't think either of these were the offender, nonetheless, I removed both. I don't use either that much anyway.

Is this the complete list of Startup items? I ask this because whenever I boot this machine, Skype loads itself into my task bar, and I've never given it permission to do this. I have to manually close it if I want to get rid of it.

Let me ask you -- is there anything about the Restore process that might leave something behind? A "switch" set wrong or something? As you may recall, in the above linked thread, I stated that this problem appeared after I reset the machine to its most recent Restore point (it was working fine at that point too).

When I typed in "win+R" this started up a program called "Windows Easy Transfer," a process I've never seen before. I went ahead and set it up to run on both computers, but I don't see how this pertains to my problem. So instead I opened up a command prompt and typed in the remainder of your recommendation.

So I went to the Startup tab and discovered a ton of stuff that's getting loaded. Including duplicates of a few programs. I disabled everything except for a couple of hardware-specific processes and one Windows application. Then I rebooted and loaded a browser. OK, I'm back on the Internet. Now I guess I get to find out which of the couple of dozen or so items under the startup tab is the culprit.

Regarding the steps you told me to perform before, the responses I got were not unusual. Most were just telling me to reboot my machine, which I did. It seems that the entire series of commands you gave me was necessary to get the system back online. But when I rebooted, no more Internet access, which points to startup items, as you correctly guessed. I have a few in mind that I'm gonna get rid of. I think that this will probably take care of things.

Thanks again for all your help, Nihal. I will report back if it appears that things are now truly fixed.

Well, it's been a few weeks and I realize I haven't checked back in here. The problem appears to have been solved. It hasn't reappeared since I dumped a bunch of stuff from my machine's startup routine. So I'm gonna mark this problems "Solved."

Thanks again!