Laptop mysteries

[The Driver]

My wife's Sony Vaio laptop has stopped connecting to the internet. It can establish a wireless connection and acknowledges the connection of a network cable, but won't open any websites. All of the Windows diagnostics come up as being OK and (curiously without net access) it is confirming that it has the latest drivers.

Somewhat more sinister is that something has switched off the system restore so that we are unable to roll back the machine status to an earlier time.

Any ideas? Or are we going to have to back up all her data and do a clean install from the recovery discs?

Windows Vista, by the way...

[packrat]

Sounds like a malware infection possibly?

Download the program (the free version) at http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

Put it on a memory stick or something to load onto the laptop. Your best bet would be to start the laptop in Safe Mode (usually accessed by repeatedly pressing F8 on startup and selecting the Safe Mode option.

Run the Anti Malware program then and see what happpens - it should be able to clear most problems. Be aware that these sorts of trojans/ infections often manage to disable your security programs as a first step, hence booting in Safe Mode.

Good luck

[The Driver]

Thanks. Will give it a try.

Certainly sounds like some sort of malware if something's disabled system restore...

[The Driver]

Hmm. That came up with nothing. Very confused.

[The Dríver]

nope. In Device Manager under network adapters there's a yellow triangle next to '6TO4 Adapter'. The check says that it's the right version but in Prperties under 'General' it says 'This device cannot start. (Code 10)'. Trying to find where to download the bloody thing from Microsoft, mind. The version number I have is 6.0.6.16356.

Assuming I'm not barking up the wrong tree here...

[packrat]

Had a quick look and found the following;

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/For ... ab5206949a

Actually you can see this question in a number of places, obviously a common Vista issue

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=6t04+a ... =firefox-a

Doesn't really answer your particular situation though.....

Sorry, my limited tech skills now exhausted

[The Driver]

Thanks for your efforts. Whatever caused the problem remained well hidden.

Thankfully the Sony Vaio's recovery option works a treat, and after backing up all of the wife's documents and stuff I basically restored the thing to its factory settings. Working a treat now.

I'm just considering whether or not to use the parental controls to limit here to known safe sites!!