We had some kind of power glitch last night (had to reset all our digital clocks, etc). And I had no Wireless connection to either of our Laptops (running Vista - pretty standard stuff) this morning.
Our router (connected to a Time-Warner cable modem) would appear to be pretty much 'dead' and my wife's wired ethernet connection both seem to be suddenly defective based on the following information.
1) The amber 'link' light on my cable modem, which goes on with a connection to a live client (like one of my laptops or my router) is off when connected to the router. It is on (and/or blinks with activity) when connected to MY laptop. I have done a number of hard resets (unplug for several minutes and plug back in) to the router. The activity lights on the modem are all off (other than the 4 wired connection lights which are on) when connected to the router (and work fine connected to MY laptop).2) Neither of the laptops sees a wireless signal from the wireless router
3) I don't have a problem connecting my laptop directly to the cable modem and getting connected4) I can't connect my wife's laptop (via ethernet wire) to the cable modem. The amber activity light on the cable modem comes on, but nothing happens (and the light never blinks indicating activity). "Network and Sharing" shows a connection to an "unidentified network" and the internet connection is X'ed out.
5) Re: #4 above, when I take the 'connect to a network' path on my wife's laptop, and enter my ISP's Username and Password, I get a failure and 'Diagnose the Problem' yields "did not find any problems ...".6) Re: #5 above - if I disconnect the internet connection (as in plug the ethernet wire from my wife's laptop), the symptoms are identical which leads me to conclude that this 'problem diagnosis path' doesn't detect anything outside the 'walls' of the computer. And makes me wonder just exactly what it does detect.
I think (but don't actually recall specifically) that I have connected my wife's laptop via direct ethernet wire (maybe not, but I am relative certain that I have done this a couple times in the past). Assuming that this is true the data would indicate that somehow my wife's laptop's ethernet connection has died and additionally my router has died. But I am really suspicious of 'simultaneous failure' answers to problems like this (and I am not a particularly network savvy person).
Suggestions on where to go (other than replace a laptop and a wireless router, which is what the data indicates to me)?
Thanks.
dave