I recently did a factory restore on my laptop [Gateway NV52 w/ Windows 7] and the internet connected beautifully as always through a wireless connection, through the Actiontec MI424 provided to us by Verizon. After restarting the PC, it connected to the internet automatically as usual. However, after opening Internet Explorer, Firefox, and several other programs that use the internet, they all seem to agree that there is no connection to the internet.
On the bottom right-hand part of the screen, all five bars appear as normal representing the WiFi connection. I checked the Network and Sharing Center, and the connection map showed that there was nothing obstructing the connection to the internet. I tried running Microsoft Security Essentials to detect anything malicious; but all was fine. I restarted the PC, connected it via Ethernet to the router, and nothing. This morning, the internet was running fairly slow on all our other PCs, but that issue resolved itself. I also went into the Device Manager to see if anything was wrong with the drivers, but it detected no problem.
Is this a common problem? I've never experienced it before. The only other thing I can think of to fix this would be to reset the router, but I'm not sure if that would do something to the set-top boxes. Any help would be appreciated.
