My shiny new laptop runs the 64-bit version of Vista Home.  I started noticing some oddities with connecting to the wireless network.  It would start up and connect, but it would say "local only".  No biggie: click, go to the necessary screen, click on the "X" in between the icon representing the network and the Internet, and tell it to repair the connection.  Except . . . I would have to do this several times before it would work.  And I seemed to have to do this every time I booted up.  And even after doing this, sometimes the connection would "drop" after a few moments.  And sometimes it looked as though it had connected and I had Internet connectivity, I still couldn't connect to any web pages. 

Okay, something is wrong with the wireless.  Take the laptop back to Best Buy and replace it.  All is good with the world, right?

Wrong! 

First, I took the thing in to work.  There, it connected just fine to the wireless connection.  Second, this laptop comes with a little I-have-no-idea-what-to-call-it mode.  Click on a button and instead of booting in to Windows, it boots up "something else" (I suspect it's Linux-based).  This mode boots up nice and fast, and is useful if you quickly want to check a web page or check e-mail or listen to a CD or whatever.  Cute.  And this mode had no problem with the wireless connection either! 

Okay, so there's a problem with Vista 64?  I have had no problem with 32-bit Vista on this network.  I poked around a bit, and I found that there are problems with Vista and FIOS and the Actiontec router that comes with FIOS service.  Keep in mind: Vista works with damn near every other network and FIOS works fine with damn near every other OS . . . so both Verizon and Microsoft are busy pointing their fingers at each other.

By the way, everything worked great when I used a wired connection. 

Anyway, I've been fussing with this for several days.  Patches from Microsoft.  Advice from this-forum-or-that.  Changing settings.  No luck.  The other day, I found something that MIGHT work (I'll reserve judgment until a week has passed, and then I'll do the happy dance).

I dug out an old Linksys-G router.  The Actiontec router that Verizon gave me is plugged into a coax line, so I can't just replace routers.  There are ways of turning off the router functionality and using a different router, but I understand that screws up some TV service.  I found, though, that I could plug the Linksys router into the Actiontec router, and use the Linksys router's wireless.  Some notes about that:

(1) With my first attempt, I plugged the wire from the Actiontec router into the "WAN" port for the Linksys router.  That didn't work.  Instead, I needed to plug it in to one of the other ports. 

(2) I needed to make some settings changes first: change the Linksys router's IP address, change the SSID, and set up wireless security.

(3) AFTER making those changes, I then turned off the Linksys router's DHCP server.  I found that when I do this, I can't seem to connect to this router's admin screens any more.  I'll poke around about that later.

After that, my laptop was able to connect to it just fine, and the connection stayed for about an hour.  Tonight, I'll give it a real try.  Of course, this is probably a bit of a speed drop, but I still have the ability to use a wired connection in that case. 

Hopefully, in a week I'll post that this worked.  If it doesn't . . . I'll be posting earlier.