Hey!
I'm living at a school in Thailand where we get satellite internet. I simply have to plug the ethernet cable into my PC to connect to the internet. Other visitors have had no problem connecting to the web.

My girlfriend has arrived with her Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista and when we plug it in we cannot access the internet. It seems to recognize that it is connected to a network but we can't get it to connect to the internet. Vista runs in Japanese to make things more difficult. I've never used Vista before so I'm totally lost. She doesn't know a lot about computers so she isn't really able to translate it. We've tried for awhile to create and change existing connections but with no success.

I know that I'm not giving a lot of good information here but we aren't sure what to do. We also tried for awhile to change the OS language to English so that I could figure it out, but I'm not sure if that is possible.

All other PCs(running on XP) can connect without any configuration. Why would her computer not recognize the connection? Is this a Vista issue?

Thanks a lot!
Emmett

While I'm not sure that this is the issue, you can try this to see if it lets you connect. It's a "workaround" designed to cope with hardware that isn't Vista compatible.

1) Disable the DHCP Broadcast Flag for all the network adapters on the system (both wired and wireless) by using this link: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/928233
2) Disable IPv6 on all network adapters (by going into the properties for each adapter and unchecking IPv6)
3) Disable the IPHelper service in services.msc

Hey thanks for the help.

It was an ordeal trying to do all of that in Japapanese but it seems to have worked! We were just at my friend's restaurant using her wireless and after implementing your suggestions we still couldn't connect, but we've just come to another spot, plugged in the ethernet cable and its working! So now we have the wireless issue, but that can wait awhile, thanks!

If it works on wired, but not on wireless - there's a chance that the fix didn't take for the DHCP Broadcast Flag.

When following the instructions for the DHCP Broadcast Flag, you'll notice several GUID's under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\ key (my system has 3)
One of the keys is for your wired connection, one is for your wireless connection, and I'm unsure of the 3rd one.
You must perform the changes detailed in that article on all 3 of those GUID's

You'll also have to disable the IPv6 for both the wired and wireless network connections.

Thanks. Actually I hadn't changed the middle GUID because it was basically empty. I did that just now.

So when I last reported we had gotten it to work in the town on a wired connection but not on the wireless. I haven't had a chance to attempt the wireless since changing the last GUID.

More importantly when we came back here to our school it didn't work. I was surprised because our internet at school is not wireless and it had just worked in town. I've changed that last GUID, checked your other 2 suggestions and restarted. It still doesn't work.

Anything I should check or anything else to try? Also I'm having trouble dealing with Vista in Japanese so if they're anything that you suggest that isn't easy to find without reading I'd appreciate a few simple directions(finding the properties for the internet devices to change the IPv6s was epic, whereas in XP I could do it easily), thanks!

Hey I'm sorry if this is vague but I'm out of my element here. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks a lot!