Network/Internet Problems

Got myself a bit of a pickle, need halp!

Our household network consists of an optus cable connection, a netgear router and 2 PCs connected to said router. Last night when I went to be everything was fine. Today neither computer can access the internet. The strange part is that both computers show that the network connection is fine. It will tell me when I unplug the network cable and it will tell me when I reconnect it. I can get each computer to access the net one at a time by running the ethernet cable from the cable modem straight to a signle computer. But whenever I try to get the computers to connect to the net via the router the same problem occurs.

The only thing that has changed in the last day is some windows security updates, but would they be able to do this? No one has been messing with the router configuration. Both computers run Windows XP.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I'm trying to fix this for dad who desperately needs the net connection for work. If any more info is needed for helpage please let me know.

I assume both machines were windows updated? Can you remember what updates were applied, or I think you can go to the update site to see what the last updates where, try uninstalling them if possible and see if that fixes the problem.

Make sure it didnt enable any firewalls the machines might run, windows included.

Can you confirm if the router works at all? Test somewhere else, etc?

One machine had the very latest update, the other had a large backlog of updates done. I'll look into the updates a bit further.

Fixed the problem now by switching the router. Never really figured out what caused the problems, it wasn't the windows updates because I tried reinstalling on one of the machines and it didn't help.

Quote from uber tard:
Fixed the problem now by switching the router. Never really figured out what caused the problems, it wasn't the windows updates because I tried reinstalling on one of the machines and it didn't help.
I dont know if this helps but I find the same problem everynow and again. My fix is to unplug the power from the modem (dlink dls604t) wait a few secs and reconnect. It is a funny problem as everything still says it is connected... msn sometimes continues to work as well as torrents other times I loose everything.
Good to C you got it so quick