Cannot access the internet thrrough laptop.

[Weapondrift]

I am the owner of a dell M1500 laptop with Vista as my OS. I know very little about the technical side of computers. Therefor I am hoping you all can help me.
For the last 3-4 weeks I havent been able to access the internet at my house. My roomate can however and he hasnt had any issues with his computer. Everytime I click on IE it times out on me. I can however connect with no issues using MTGO (Magic The Gathering Online) but this is the absolute extent of my online capabilities. The following are the things in order that i have done to try to fix this problem.
1) 2 system restores
2) Partition reset(restore?)
3) call Dell customer support who made me do a Harddrive reset
4) loan it to an IS manager who didnt see anything but did tell me to turn off Protected Mode.

The only internet access I have is either my phone or using my work computers .

 

[Neodude1123201]

Wireless or using Ethernet? Also are you going through a router of another computer?

 

[Weapondrift]

completly wireless, altho i have plugged in directly to my router via ethernet and it still didnt work.

My router is not off of a computer.

 

[Neodude1123201]

Ok,Im not a vista user so im not all the familiar with it,but:

Click "Start" then "Control Panel" and double-click on the "Manage network connections" link.

Click the "Network" tab. You will see that Windows Vista is set to "Automatically assign an IP address."

Double Check it's Set to automatically assign and IP Adress,Also check the 'work offline' isnt on in internet explorer.

Lastly,if you are using internet explorer click on the tools button,and click on diagnose connection problems and it should tell you the problem there.

 

[Weapondrift]

When I get home later today I will repost my reslults.

I think I have already done a connection diagnosis, however I think it said something along the lines of "this isnt working"

 

[Neodude1123201]

That's Microsoft for ya

Well,When you pot the results back i'll take a look see for ya

 

[Weapondrift]

god bless them LOL

Thanks

 

[dude_se]

this network doesnt need some sort of specific proxy settings does it?
at uni if i dont use their proxy i just get white pages, unless im using msn or something.

 

[Weapondrift]

*edit
I don't see where it says to automatically detect ip address.

Im not sure where I find my proxy settings :/

 

[Weapondrift]

Anyone still there?