I just solved a problem and thought you may find it helpful. I couldn’t access the internet and pressing the little reset button on my D-Link wired router solved the problem.

I have multiple computers connected to a D-Link wired router. One of these computers stopped being able to connect to the internet suddenly yesterday. It just stopped working correctly and couldn’t even get to Google. I ran through more steps than I needed. I first checked that the software firewall on the machine wasn’t causing a problem. I released and renewed the ip address multiple times. And I tried Windows XP’s “repair connection” feature which flushes out some of the cached data and replaces it with new data from your connection, in the hopes that outdated data had somehow become stuck in the machine.

What had me stumped was that I was getting an ip address but I could not connect to the internet. I couldn’t even connect to the router. I was receiving exactly 1 packed from the router (presumably with the ip address) and nothing more (you can see this in the connection details where it shows Sent and Receive packets). Could squirrels have chewed through part of the cat 5 cable? Is that even possible with it still running, albeit incorrectly?

In the end the solution was pressing the little “reset” button on the back of the router. I have no idea what happened to it that would keep one machine working fine and one not, but it works again… for now. I hope that helps someone else out there. Always try resetting the router. But don’t hold down the reset button because it will erase your settings and bring you back to the factory defaults before you set things like passwords. So to recap: briefly press a router’s reset button whenever something weird starts happening with your connection. If that doesn’t solve it you have bigger problems to deal with.