Frustrating Unidentified Network - Need help before I kill someone

[Busymonkey]

[HIGHLIGHT]Solved - See post #3[/HIGHLIGHT]

I have a desktop computer with Windows 7 installed. I was gonna give the computer to my dad, so I decided to re-install the OS, to clean up the computer for him.

After numerous attempts to install the damn thing, I finally had it up and running.
Happy and satisfied as I was, I started downloading and installing updates, 96 updates to be exact. I restarted the computer and that's when it started.

The network icon in the corner had a yellow triangle with a '!' in it. In the Network and Sharing Center it said "Unidentified Network - Local Area Connection".

What I tried:
- Restarted computer
- Turning router off and on
- Ran the troubleshoot
- Tried 4 different cables
- Tried the different batch commands:
*- netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt
*- netsh winsock reset
*- ROUTE DELETE 0.0.0.0
- Disabled IPv6
- Changed the IPv4 settings to a static IP and with the 'obtain automatically' settings
- Changed the Speed/Duplex settings in the NIC
- Added the MAC adress of the NIC manually
- De- and reactivated the NIC
- Removed the NIC in Device Manager and restarted computer
- Plugged out the computer, press the start button to burn off the last electricity and waited for 1 minute.
- Did a recovery of the system
- Downloaded the driver on my laptop and moved it to my desktop
- Probably more

I dont have the Apple Bonjour Service, nor do I have Adobe CS3, which apparently conflicts with the default gateway.

Eventually I got the idea to get the NIC from my dads computer (which is like 10 years old) and that worked after a restart.

Reliefed as I was, I started downloading some updates for the computer and after the updates I restarted.
Now. It. Doesent. Work... Again.

I really suspect one of the updates to be crooked, but I did a recovery of the system the first time, to right after the installation of the OS.

Alot of people have had this problem already, and I've found 1000 threads, where this problem has been solved, but it havent worked for me.

If anyone actually took the time to read this and have some suggestions, I am wide open.

TL;DR: Cant connect to the internet, "Unidentified Network - Local Area Connection" message. Tried alot of stuff, worked, broke again. Help, please.

[cdlink14]

I get this problem everytime using my on-board network card with XP. If I update the driver using windows update, or downloading from the manufacturer website I just get the yellow exclamation mark.

If I use the Driver which was included on my motherboard CD however, I get no problems.

Try rolling back the driver if possible or just re-install it from the CD.

[Busymonkey]

I dont have a motherboard CD, unfortunately. However, the net is working again.

I unplugged the desktop completely, pressed the power button to use the power in the battery and then left it like that over night, in an attempt to reset the NCI.

I dont know if that helped, or it just decided to work. Thanks for the reply though :)

[Cob.Razorice]

Huh, Ironic...

Last night I was installing 7 on my server, when I had the EXACT same issue.
Did the computer go into sleep at all while installing the updates? (This was the cause)
The way I got around it was I uninstalling the NIC (Device manager) and installing the drivers for it, then rebooting.

Seemed to do the trick.

[B]EDIT:[/B] (Sorry didn't read that it had been solved)