Ok.. my parents have recently bought two laptops:

• http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/12/hps-compaq-presario-v6000-laptop/      (vista home premium)

and

• http://www.firstglimpsemag.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2F2008%2Ff0504%2Ffg26%2Ffg26.asp  (vista home premium)

Both have been working great for about 3 months of use on the Compaq and 1 month for the Toshiba. Both have been used for web surfing,some office apps, and other basic uses by my parents. About a week ago, both laptops stopped connecting to my wireles network and the Toshiba also stopped connecting even with an ethernet cable plugged in.  I am  thinking that the compaq just has a bad driver because when I flip the wireless adapter to the on or off setting, windows recognizes no change in the hardware configuration. I have disconnected and reconnected both laptops from the network and have re-entered the network keys and info, but neither will sucessfully connect without limited capabilities.  The toshiba will connect to the network but stays in a local only state. I am still running XP on my desktop (primary computer) and don't have very much experience with Vista, but I have heard that vista has troubles in this area. Just looking for some guidance here, any advice is greatly appreciated

Have yout tried to reset the router or modem? 

ya, that was one of the first things i tried

I would try turning off the router for 2-3 min and reset the Ip on the computers. I assume that your PC is still getting the net. i would have thought i might my the wireless antena has gone out but you said your tried the ethernet port as well with no luck.... it is a weird situation 

 hmm sorry for such a long time on the reply, but i just got back from the beach. I left my router off during the trip and my ethernet cable now is working properly but still no wireless connections.

Try a simple winsock reset perhaps? (Open cmd WITH administrative priviledges and type without quotes "netsh winsock reset" and restart the computer.)

Next I'd try the ol' ipconfig /release and then ipconfig /renew  (by opening cmd WITH administrative priviledges) followed by a restart and see if that helps

Also you could stop the WZC service (access it by typing services.msc in the run-line), restart the PC and restart the service

Do you have norton internet securiy or Mcafee Security center installed on either machine? If so....PROBABLY your culprit

 Ok sweet, I will try some of those cmds tonight when I get a little free time. Ill post later with the results.