I installed a brand new copy of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 last night, and everything worked flawless during and after the installation. The internet worked perfectly in the hours that followed the installation. Fast forward to this morning--I turned on the computer from standby (which is the mode I put it in last night), and it presented some odd error about not being able to preserve the standby data, something else about firmware, and then it gave me the option to try to resume or just reboot. I opted to reboot because I didn't care enough to resume my session. After a quick reboot (love my new SSD :-D), I found the internet connection stopped working. The connection for my (single) LAN port on my Intel 975XBX2 motherboard is now showing as "unidentified network". When doing an ipconfig /all, this is what came up: Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Jason-PC Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/1000 PL Network Connection Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-19-D1-26-84-D9 DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::87f:8824:c9a3:ff82%16(Preferred) Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.255.130(Preferred) Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 268442065 DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-12-AB-B4-66-00-19-D1-26-84-D9 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : fec0:0:0:ffff::1%1 fec0:0:0:ffff::2%1 fec0:0:0:ffff::3%1 NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled You can see that Windows defaulted me to the 169.XXX IP format... I have tried the following: 1. Checking the patch cable--I can quickly and easily connect to the internet using my Thinkpad (Vista) using the exact same cable that plugs into the back of my desktop, so there are no network-related causes. 2. Disabling and re-enabling my LAN connection - this did nothing. 3. Uninstalling and reinstalling the LAN driver - this did nothing. 4. Manually setting the IP according to my router's specs - this did nothing. 5. Doing a system restore to yesterday when this was working - this did nothing. 6. a billion other things - these did nothing. It turns out, I had another hard drive connected (in addition to my system drive) that was my old system drive for Windows 7 (RC build 7100, I connected it after I initially booted YESTERDAY). For some reason or another, when I booted the comp today with this drive still attached, the network adapter did not work. I don't know the reason, but I just wanted to post here that after removing it my internet returned. Hope this helps someone!

Thank you for sharing it. It will help people who has similar issue. Thanks again:)