Network issues.

Ended up with a rather frustrating problem a couple of days ago regarding connecting to the net.
Apparently the connection decided to die all of a sudden by itself for some unknown reason and I've been unable to connect to the net since then. I've not made any changes to anything whatsoever, no recent windows or firewall updates, AVG update was normal as always, no major updates on that front - I was kinda just gaming a bit via Steam when it all of a sudden happened. Thing is that after having checked the network card, cable, scanned for viruses/malware, done a HJT check and so on, the darn thing still refuses to connect to the net. Weird part is though that it does get an IP and is able to contact the DNS server - just that packets don't really seem to be received properly. They just trickle in one packet every few seconds. Sending packets out doesn't seem to be a problem. I have called my ISP and they do seem to get a signal from me so I am rather clueless as to what could be wrong. I cannot tracert or ping anything past my card (127.0.0.1 responds just fine so the card itself works at least). Tried uninstalling ZoneAlarm as that was the only firewall I've been using but obviously the problem wasn't there.

I've tried pretty much everything now save from a total OS re-installation which I'd rather avoid.

Thing is that the net died like this a couple of times the day before all of this happened as well but this lasted for a few minutes only before coming back again. The third time it really killed it off though.

Any clue as to what might be causing this?

 

*bump*