my modem is showing up as a wan miniport

My mom got a new computer as a present (it has vista) from my brother and it worked great for a week and now we cant get on the internet, we have DSL and my moms computer is how everyone gets the internet. The computer is trying to go through a wan miniport ppoe (what the hell is that) to get to the net. If you plug into the router you can see my computer my brothers computer and my moms work laptop but not her main computer and you cant get to the internet. PLEASE HELP ME!

 

Look in network connections and see if there are any. Check Device Manager and see if the network card is installed properly.

 

The network thing says that their are connections available but i cant connect and how do i check the other thing?

 

Right-click My Computer, Manage, Device Manager. See if everything looks OK there.

 

it doesn't look like the computer thinks anything is wrong (no little red x's or !)

 

Ok now its trying to dial through the wan miniport and we have dsl

 

Have you rebooted both the computer and the modem? You could try resetting the router, too. Try each of those, one at a time and let things stabilize before doing the next. I'd go Modem, router, then PC.

 

tried that and it did nothing

 

Try going into services and turning off the firewall. Do you have one installed or do you use the Windows firewall? Have any services been changes or disabled?

Look in Internet Options and see what is set as the default connection.

Check all the network settings. Did you set up a workgroup? Check that the name is correct.

 

we have windows firewall and it wasn't turned on when this started and we haven changed service or disabled anything

 

Do you use any other firewall? If the firewall service is not running, try starting it.

Can you explain your setup a bit? You said that you all connect to the internet through that machine, so do you have connection sharing or what?

 

we don't have any other firewall and its on

 

ummm. Well moms computer is right next to the dsl line so we had (im connected to the dsl directly right now) the dsl plugged in to a wireless router then that into my moms computer now when we have the dsl plugged into the router you cant get internet and even if you plug the dsl directly from the box to my moms computer it wont detect it.

 

Do you see any lights on the network card that indicates that it is on and seeing a connection? Could the card have come out of its slot? Did you see the network card in the Device Manager?

 

when i plug it in to the back of the computer a little green light comes on and the network card says its running properly