I just put together a new Windows Vista machine. It runs nice and fast, but although it has onboard LAN, it doesn't seem to want to access my network or the internet.

I use a Linksys WRT54G wireless broadband router that I am directly connected into.

The right drivers installed for the LAN card? Do you have a light on the jack where it's plugged in?

It's onboard LAN, so yes the right drivers are installed, but I don't know if there are better drivers. It's pretty little amber light blinks properly and all.

when you open a command prompt and type ipconfig /all, what do you get? (I'm assuming you can open a command prompt on Vista? I hardly messed with it yet)

169.254.15.10

ok, so that means you're not getting an IP assigned from the router. If you haven't already, type ipconfig /renew and see if it gets one. If not, try another cable, and then try running your internet connection straight into the PC, if possible. Failing that, try getting updated drivers and copying them to a usb drive if you have one, to get them on there and install. I've seen a case or two where the automatically selected drivers were the wrong ones.

One doesn't necessarily follow the other.

Onboard vs. modular makes no difference when it comes to drivers. You still gotta load one.

True, but in this case, it was the Windows Vista software that was at fault. Microsoft support had me change a registry line and voila! I am now connected.

At least it seems to be that. I've had the system apart since then and it is still working. Currently, I am putting new software on the machine.

I'm a happy camper again. I haven't built myself a new computer in about 6 years, and hadn't touched Vista yet. So, getting through this with what appears to be only one glitch is nice.

Congrata on your new computer! I hope it goes as fast as Jay Garrick!

It is incredibly fast for what I am used to. I upgraded to an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ processor. I got myself a SATA 320Gb hard drive and have 2 Gb of RAM (which is upgradeable to 8Gb), and I am using a Nvdea GeForce 7300 video card with 256Mb of RAM.

I'm sorry you have Vista on your computer.

I experienced Vista on a customers computer at work today and I have to agree with Judge WAN. It was a pain.

Part of getting along with Vista means unlearning things you know so well about XP.
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Myself, I prefer Fedora. But Vista is fine also.

Spent two hours with a Vista laptop recently doing something that would have taken 10 minutes or less on XP or Linux. Screw that. I'll upgrade only if I'm forced to by some software I want to run requiring it.

I'm surprised you're not using Linux...

I've got it on both of my laptops. One was upgraded, and I'm going to roll that one back to XP. Its mobo maxes out at 1GB of RAM, and that's just not enough.

My new laptop came with it, and it works fine for me. Based on the specs Mark listed, it should do just fine.

Heh. We'll see. So far, outside of networking, I haven't experienced any real difficulties yet.

Yeah, I noticed that. For once, I decided that since I could get the OS very cheap (and I mean VERY cheap), I went for putting the one I knew nothing about. At least I will start learning new stuff again.

Thanks Hank. Yeah, so far, it runs smoothly. My brother came over today and we ran Guild Wars on it, then I tried out Paint Shop Pro XI on it, which loaded about 3x as fast as it has on any machine I've ever owned.

It handles all of my software I've put on it so far.