Yesterday I encountered a problem on my Windows Vista laptop which nearly had me stumped. I have Windows Vista Home Premium, and last night my Internet connection stopped working. My main symptom was that Windows said “Local Access Only” in the status window that appears when you hover or click on the network icon. Normally, it says “Local and Internet”, if you have Internet access through the connection.

I don’t remember changing anything, so I messed with things a bit and they still didn’t work. I uninstalled the Cisco VPN software which I had recently installed, and rebooted both my computer and the router, but still no luck.

I Googled for solutions, and tried many things, but I believe it’s one of these three (or a combination of all three) things that did the trick:

1. Disable IPv6. This means unchecking the box in Wireless Network Properties.
2. Explicitly set your DNS address. This may be the IP of your router: for me, it’s 192.168.0.1, some routers use 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1 or maybe even something else.
3. Turn off your computer, cut power to the router. Give the router power again and wait for the lights to all go green, then power on the computer.

It worked for me!