I installed Windows 7 a couple of weeks ago and all has been well until recently. On startup , the network icon has the blue circle on continually and there is no internet connection. The network and sharing centre will not open. Control Panel Troubleshooting will not open. IE8 will not open. Sometimes when I reboot everything works normally again, but not always.This is extremely annoying - any ideas ?

Hi Digibitz, Are there any error messages or symptoms? I would like to suggest you test the issue in Clean Boot. If the issue persists in Clean Boot, I also would like to suggest you run System Restore to check the issue. Whats the result?Arthur Li - MSFT

Hi Arthur,Internet connection starts everytime without problems in 'Safe mode with networking'.I was unable to do a system restore back to before the problem occurred.I guess there has to be some startup conflict, but I don't know how I'll find it....The Event Viewer shows nothing of interest.

Hi Digibitz, Have you updated the BIOS and the network card driver for Windows 7? Does it work normally in Clean Boot? If it only works fine in Safe Mode with Networking, I would like to suggest you perform a Device Clean Boot to check if there is a hardware conflict. Please unplug all unnecessary devices to test the issue. In this situation, your system will only have the basic hardware devices and it should be more stable. If it is inconvenient to unplug the devices, we can disable them in Device Manager. Please refer to the following steps: 1. Click "Start", type "DEVMGMT.MSC" in the Search textbox and press Enter. Please click Allow if the User Account Control window is prompted. 2. Expand "Sound, video and game controllers". 3. Right click on your Sound Card, select "Properties" 4. Click "Driver" tab, click Disable (Disable the selected device). Click OK 5. Please use the same method to disable other hardware such as: Modem, CD-R drive and so on. Please note some devices such as video adapter are not available to be disabled. Then, restart your computer. Does it work normally? If the system is stable, we can re-enable the devices one by one to narrow down the root cause. Arthur Li - MSFT

Thanks for your help.I gave up after much messing around.I'd put a lot of work into setting things up the way I wanted and really didn't want to do a clean re-install if I could help it.I tried an 'update' re-install , not convinced it would work - but it actually fixed the problem and i still have my installed apps and settings intact !